The journalists naturally complained to their Ambassadors, who took up their cause with commendable readiness. Without immediate effect, however; the authorities, though themselves very strong on the point of duty, wondered much at journalists being in a place where duty alone could have brought them, and refused any sort of apology or other satisfaction. The Government, however, eventually expressed its "regret," and a year or two after, possibly in the spirit of conciliation and compensation, agreed to give foreign journalists in Berlin the _passe-partout_, or _coupe-fil_, as it is known in France, which is one of the privileges most valued by the journalist, native and foreign, in Paris. Among the international agreements of the year was a commercial one between Germany and America. Commercial relations between the two countries have never been quite satisfactory to either, and if there is no tariff war, occasions of tariff tension, with consequent disturbance of trade, constantly arise. Germany's European commercial treaties have secured her a sufficiency of raw material for her industry. Her chief object now is not so much perhaps to facilitate imports of material from other countries as to find markets, in America as elsewhere, for her industry's finished products. Consequently she strongly dislikes the high tariff barriers of the United States, inaugurated by the Dingley tariff of 1897, and has in addition certain grievances against that country regarding customs administration in respect of appraisement, invoices, and the like. Her commercial connexion with America dates from the treaty of "friendship and commerce" made by Frederick the Great, and having the most-favoured-nation treatment as its basis; a regular treaty of the same kind between Prussia and America was entered into in 1828; and since then commercial relations have been regulated provisionally by a series of short-term agreements which, however, America claims, do not confer on Germany unrestricted right to most-favoured-nation treatment. By the agreement now in force, concluded this year (1910), America and Germany grant each other the benefit of their minimum duties. Since the "November storm" the Emperor had made no reference to the doctrine of Divine Right, nor given any indication of a desire to exercise the "personal regiment" which is the natural corollary to it. It has been seen that the doctrine, viewed from the English standpoint, is a species of mental malady to which Hohenzollern monarchs are hereditarily subject. It recurs intermittently and particularly whenever a Hohenzollern monarch speaks in Koenigsberg, the Scone of Prussia, where Prussian Kings are crowned. When at Koenigsberg this year the Emperor suffered from a return of the royal _idée fixe_. "Here my grandfather," he said,