There was much protest because the new constitution did not grant the provinces sufficient independence. The previous Provincial Assembly (_Landesausschuss_) had been summarily closed on the 9th of May, 1911. Affairs were but little improved under the new arrangement, and the Emperor came to Strasburg in great anger, May 13, 1912, and made the following threatening address: "If this keeps up I shall knock your constitution to bits. Up to the present you have known me from my good side, but you can perhaps learn to know me from the other side also. If things do not change, we will make of Alsace-Lorraine a Prussian province." This speech of the Emperor's is not printed officially, but it was made the subject of an interpellation in the Reichstag on May 17, 1912, and the burgomaster of Strasburg admitted that the sense of the imperial utterance was properly given. With regard to Alsace-Lorraine, the Emperor has tried both kindness and severity. The Zabern incident proved that in neither of these policies had he succeeded in winning either the love or the subjection of the inhabitants. The following is the estimate of Dr. H. A. Gibbons on the situation in Alsace-Lorraine immediately before the outbreak of the European War: "One could easily fill many pages with illustrations of senseless persecutions, most of them of the pettiest character, but some more serious in nature, which Alsace and Lorraine have had to endure since the granting of the constitution. Newspapers, illustrated journals, clubs, and organizations of all kinds have been annoyed constantly by police interference. Their editors, artists, and managers have been brought frequently into court. Zislin and Hansi, celebrated caricaturists, have found themselves provoked to bolder and bolder defiances by successive condemnations and have endured imprisonment as well as fines. Hansi was sentenced to a year's imprisonment by the High Court of Leipsic only a month before the present war broke out and chose exile rather than a Prussian fortress. "The greatest effort during the past few years has been made in the schools to influence the minds of the growing generation against the '_souvenir de France_,' and to impress upon the Alsacians what good fortune had come to them to be born German citizens.