Queer Complication of Territory.
Kings and presidents send ambassadors to the capitals of other countries, as you know. The residence of these ambassadors is, in law, not a part of the country in whose capital they are located, but a part of the country from which comes the ambassador residing there at the moment. For instance, the residence of the American Ambassador to France is in Paris, but at law it is not French but United States territory. A novel incident grew out of this legal fiction recently.
The Japanese Embassy in Berlin is not German, but Japan territory, of course. The embassy owns a parrot. The parrot got out of its cage and took lodgement in a neighboring tree—a tree in Germany, not in Japan. A Japanese servant remaining in Japan levelled a hose at the parrot, with the aim of dislodging him. It chanced that beneath the tree there sat, at the time, a German resident of wealth. The water that dislodged the parrot drenched him and ruined his clothes. He sued for damages, and got $4—a compromise sum, because the inflictor of the damage was a resident of Japan, had not left his own country, and could not be dragged into a German police court.