NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE debates in the Reichstag on the Estimates on Monday and. Tuesday were noteworthy for the speeches of Prince Billow and Herr Bebel. Herr Bebel, who spoke for two hours on Tuesday, declared that even these elections had shown that -every third man over twenty-five was a Social Democrat, while the Centre and Social Democracy were a million and a quarter stronger than the whole of the "Hottentot bloc." Prince' Billow in his reply adopted a tone of uncompromising hostility to the Social Democrats, whom he condemned as a party of pure negation and destruc- tive criticism. Their intolerant dogmatism had been repro- bated by their French allies. A professedly democratic party and an autocratic leadership were a contradiction in terms, and their defeat was also merited by the unparalleled brutality of their polemics, which Ile compared to the language of swine- herds. He attacked the Socialists for their want of patriotism, and described as an infamous calumny, as well as sheer nonsense, the insinuation of the Vorwiirts that Germany only held South-West Africa as a base from which to menace British South Africa.
