Peoples are said to have the institutions, and husbands the wives, they deserve; but if German cities, and especially Berlin, have the police they deserve, the fact speaks very uncomplimentarily for their inhabitants.  Foreigners in Germany, coming from countries where manners are more natural and obliging, frequently use the adjectives “brutal” and “stupid” when speaking of the Prussian constable.  The proceedings of the Berlin police during the Moabit riots in the capital in September this year are often quoted as an example of their brutality, while, as to stupidity, it is enough to say that a stranger in Berlin, discussing its mounted police, naively remarked that what most struck him about them was the look of intelligence on the faces of the horses.  Judgments of this kind are too sweeping.  It should be remembered that Germany is surrounded by countries of which the riff-raff is at all times seeking refuge in it or passing through it, that polyglot swindlers of every kind, the most refined as well as the most commonplace, abound, and that Anarchists are not yet an extinct species.  For the Prussian police, moreover, there is a Social Democrat behind every bush.

Possibly to this condition of things, and to the suspicion that Social Democratic organizers were about, was due the gallant charge made by half a dozen policemen, with drawn swords in their hands and revolvers at their belts, on four inoffensive English and American journalists during the Moabit riots.  Towards midnight of September 29th the journalists were seated in an open taximeter cab, in a brilliantly lighted square, which some little time before had been swept of rioters—­rioters from the Berlin police point of view being any one, man, woman, or child, who is, with guilty or innocent intent, it makes no difference, in or near a theatre of disturbance.  Suddenly half a dozen burly policemen, led on by a police spy, as he afterwards turned out to be, charged the cab and laid about them with their swords.  They probably only intended to use the flat of their weapons, but one of them succeeded in slashing deeply the hand of Reuter’s representative, who was of the party.  The other journalists escaped with contusions and bruises, thanks chiefly to the sides of the cab impeding the sword-play of the attackers.

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.