The Nancy Incident.

New York Times 100 years ago today, April 18, 1913:
    The affair at Nancy shows again how slight and utterly trivial happenings may spread ill-feeling between two nations. A party of students who had probably drunk too much bock insulted a number of Germans, men and women, in a brasserie, and followed them to the railroad station, repeating insulting remarks. The Germans bore themselves with dignity. There was, it seems, no apprehension in Nancy. Nobody supposed the incident would become historic. Yet it bids fair to become so. The matter has been brought up seriously in the Reichstag, and the French Government is making at least a show of an inquiry.
    Undoubtedly French ill-feeling against Germany has been increased lately by the unfortunate landing of a German war balloon on French soil. This was purely accidental, no indignity to France was intended, and the matter has been explained. Yet there was no very good excuse for taking the balloon on its harmless experimental trip in the neighborhood of French fortifications, while Frenchmen of the spirit of the students at Nancy would have resented the appearance of the balloon in the air above French territory. No arguments serve to quiet resentment in such cases.
    It was a childish spectacle at Nancy, and we cannot believe that the result will be serious. But the German newspapers of the most influential type consider the matter gravely, while there is ample evidence that some of the German reports of the incident have been greatly exaggerated. The explanation of this and other recent outbreaks of national ill-feeling given by Baron d'Estournelles de Constant to an English correspondent is not exactly reassuring. "Do these people want war?" he was asked. "No," he replied, "they do not want war, but they want "the war atmosphere." People in that mood might precipitate war. But it would be a war without just cause, and we cannot believe that two great nations of generally sober-minded and intelligent people will be forced into conflict by the hysterical behavior of a few irresponsible persons.