Even while in Vienna I used to be annoyed again and again by the discrepancy between the speeches of the official statesmen and the contents of the Viennese Press. And yet Vienna was still a German city, at least as far as appearances went. But one encountered an utterly different state of things on leaving Vienna, or rather German-Austria, and coming into the Slav provinces. It needed only a glance at the Prague newspapers in order to see how the whole exalted hocus-pocus of the Triple Alliance was judged from there. In Prague there was nothing but gibes and sneers for that masterpiece of statesmanship. Even in the piping times of peace, when the two emperors kissed each other on the brow in token of friendship, those papers did not cloak their belief that the alliance would be liquidated the moment a first attempt was