rentals paid for their dingy offices in Berlin. There is a hoary old tale told about an Englishman, a Frenchman, a German and a certain wonderful crocodile which once made its appearance in Orinico waters and made the nations talk about him. The Englishman decided to start at once for Brazil and hunt the creature out; the Frenchman decided on general principles to carve him out in stone, just as he imagined the new animal to be; but the German went to a zoological museum, _thought out_ the new crocodile from a set of palæozoic bones, and wrote a theory about him. Your German theorist is still far from having passed away and hardly yet realises that there is a large difference between learning the secrets of our naval forces and defeating them at sea. We recognise that German espionage is a danger—a fact which need not, however, blind us to the certainty that Germany has no more Bismarcks or Stiebers to build up new organisations with which to face the conditions of a new world. Germany has certainly no minister in office to-day who could prophesy so far ahead the course of events as Bismarck prophesied them to an Austrian lady, the Countess Hohenthal, in 1866. We recall the anecdote: "Tell me, Count," said the Austrian to the famous Chancellor at a dinner-party in Berlin. "I have two homes in Europe, one in Bohemia, the other at Knautheim, near Leipsic. My countrymen are all talking about the possibility of Prussia invading us in the near future, and you might set my mind at rest if you would advise me where to remain for the rest of the year—in Bohemia, or in Saxony?" "Countess," replied the Chancellor, "if I were you, I should remain in Saxony. It is not on a military route." The lady's Bohemian Castle was not, as it happened, very far from—Sadowa.