STARTLING STORY.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 141, 14 December 1908, Page 7

STARTLING STORY.

■' ♦ THE CASABLANCA INCIDENT. GERMAN CRUISERS READY, TO SEIZE FORTS. By Telegraph.— Vrtsa Association.— Copyright. (Received December 14, 9 a.m.) COPENHAGEN, 13th December. The Danish Conservative newspaper Vortland affirms that when the Casablanca incident was at a critical stage, two German cruisers entered the sound on the night of sth November, with lights covered, and awaited wireless orders whereby the forts off Copenhagen would have been seized had the AngloGerman crisis assumed a warlike aspect. After a somewhat anxious time, Franco accepted a German formula expressing mutual regret that the Casablanca incident involved acts of violence, and providing that whichever countryarbitrators found responsible should apologise to the other for the action of its agents. Thus the alarming aspect of the' incident terminated, but at one period the outlook was very ominous. The Times summed up the situation thus: — "Germany and France must feel relieved that the awful possibilities threatened by the Casablanca controversy have been averted. If war had been forced en France it must inevitably hava involved other countries, including Britain." Whether the French or German official t at Casablanca wore to blame remains to bo decided. The French say that there were no Gormam among tho deserters from the French Foreign Legion . whose escape a German Consular officer was trying to facilitate, and that the French gendarmerie did not, in the first instance, roughly handle that officer, being, as a matter of fact, first struck by natives employed at the German Consulate. Copenhagen, in the Sound, is built on the_ islands of Seeland and Amager, v/ibich are separated by a narrow arm of the sea, forming an excellent harbour. The city is strongly fortified and drvjded into two parts, the smaller of which, called Christianshavn, is on the island Amager. On the North of the city, and connected with it by an esplanade, is the citadel of Frederikohavii, a regular polygon with five bastions.