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diff --git a/old/54989-0.txt b/old/54989-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index c583598..0000000 --- a/old/54989-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5105 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Young Emperor, William II of Germany, by -Harold Frederic - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: The Young Emperor, William II of Germany - A Study in Character Development on a Throne - -Author: Harold Frederic - -Release Date: June 26, 2017 [EBook #54989] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNG EMPEROR *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - - - - - - - -THE YOUNG EMPEROR, WILLIAM II OF GERMANY - -A Study In Character Development On A Throne - -By Harold Frederic - -Author Of “In The Valley “The Lawton Girl” - -With Portraits - -New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons - -1891 - - -[Illustration: 0011] - - -[Illustration: 0012] - - -TO MY EDITOR, AND EVEN MORE TO MY FRIEND, - -CHARLES R. MILLER - -THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED - - - - -THE YOUNG EMPEROR, WILLIAM II OF GERMANY - - - - -CHAPTER I.--THE SUPREMACY OF THE HOHENZOLLERNS. - -In June of 1888, an army of workmen were toiling in the Champ de Mars -upon the foundations of a noble World’s Exhibition, planned to celebrate -the centenary of the death by violence of the Divine Right of Kings. -Four thousand miles westward, in the city of Chicago, some seven -hundred delegates were assembled in National Convention, to select the -twenty-third President of a great Republic, which also stood upon the -threshold of its hundredth birthday. These were both suggestive facts, -full of hopeful and inspiring thoughts to the serious mind. Considered -together by themselves they seemed very eloquent proofs of the progress -which Liberty, Enlightenment, the Rights of Man, and other admirable -abstractions spelled with capital letters, had made during the century. - -But, unfortunately or otherwise, history will not take them by -themselves. That same June of 1888 witnessed a spectacle of quite -another sort in a third large city--a spectacle which gave the lie -direct to everything that Paris and Chicago seemed to say. This sharp -and clamorous note of contradiction came from Berlin, where a helmeted -and crimson-cloaked young man, still in his thirtieth year, stood erect -on a throne, surrounded by the bowing forms of twenty ruling sovereigns, -and proclaimed, with the harsh, peremptory voice of a drill-sergeant, -that he was a War Lord, a Mailed Hand of Providence, and a sovereign -specially conceived, created, and invested with power by God, for the -personal government of some fifty millions of people. - -It is much to be feared that, in the ears of the muse of history, the -resounding shrillness of this voice drowned alike the noise of the -hammers on the banks of the Seine and the cheering of the delegates at -Chicago. - -Any man, standing on that throne in the White Saloon of the old -Schloss at Berlin, would have to be a good deal considered by his -fellow-creatures. Even if we put aside the tremendous international -importance of the position of a German Emperor, in that gravely open -question of peace or war, he must compel attention as the visible -embodiment of a fact, the existence of which those who like it least -must still recognize. This is the fact: that the Hohenzollerns, having -done many notable things in other times, have in our day revivified -and popularized the monarchical idea, not only in Germany, but to a -considerable extent elsewhere throughout Europe. It is too much to say, -perhaps, that they have made it beloved in any quarter which was hostile -before. But they have brought it to the front under new conditions, and -secured for it admiring notice as the mainspring of a most efficient, -exact, vigorous, and competent system of government. They have made an -Empire with it--a magnificent modern machine, in which army and civil -service and subsidiary federal administrations all move together like -the wheels of a watch. Under the impulse of this idea they have not only -brought governmental order out of the old-time chaos of German divisions -and dissensions, but they have given their subjects a public service, -which, taken all in all, is more effective and well-ordered than its -equivalent produced by popular institutions in America, France, or -England, and they have built up a fighting force for the protection of -German frontiers which is at once the marvel and the terror of Europe. - -Thus they have, as has been said, rescued the ancient and time-worn -function of kingship from the contempt and odium into which it had -fallen during the first half of the century, and rendered it once more -respectable in the eyes of a utilitarian world. - -But it is not enough to be useful, diligent, and capable. If it were, -the Orleans Princes might still be living in the Tuileries. A kingly -race, to maintain or increase its strength, must appeal to the national -imagination. The Hohenzollerns have been able to do this. The Prussian -imagination is largely made up of appetite, and their Kings, however -fatuous and limited of vision they may have been in other matters, have -never lost sight of this fact. If we include the Great Elector, there -have been ten of these Kings, and of the ten eight have made Prussia -bigger than they found her. Sometimes the gain has been clutched out of -the smoke and flame of battle; sometimes it has more closely resembled -burglary, or bank embezzlement on a large scale; once or twice it has -come in the form of gifts from interested neighbours, in which category, -perhaps, the cession of Heligoland may be placed--but gain of some sort -there has always been, save only in the reign of Frederic William IV and -the melancholy three months of Frederic III. - -That there should be a great affection for and pride in the -Hohenzollerns in Prussia was natural enough. They typified the strength -of beak, the power of talons and sweeping wings, which had made Prussia -what she was. But nothing save a very remarkable train of surprising -events could have brought the rest of Germany to share this affection -and pride. - -The truth is, of course, that up to 1866 most other Germans disliked -the Prussians thoroughly and vehemently, and decorated those head -Prussians, the Hohenzollerns, with an extremity of antipathy. That -brief war in Bohemia, with the consequent annexation of Hanover, -Hesse-Cassel, Nassau, and Frankfort, did not inspire any new love for -the Prussians anywhere, we may be sure, but it did open the eyes of -other Germans to the fact that their sovereigns--Kings, Electors, Grand -Dukes, and what not--were all collectively not worth the right arm of a -single Hohenzollern. - -It was a good deal to learn even this--and, turning over this revelation -in their minds, the Germans by 1871 were in a mood to move almost -abreast of Prussia in the apotheosis of the victor of Sedan and Paris. -To the end of old William’s life in 1888, there was always more or less -of the apotheosis about the Germans’ attitude toward him. He was never -quite real to them in the sense that Leopold is real in Brussels -or Humbert in Rome. The German imagination always saw him as he is -portrayed in the fine fresco by Wislicenus in the ancient imperial -palace at Goslar--a majestic figure, clad in modern war trappings yet of -mythical aspect, surrounded, it is true, by the effigies of recognizable -living Kings, Queens, and Generals, but escorted also by heroic -ancestral shades, as he rides forward out of the canvas. Close behind -him rides his son, Fritz, and he, too, following in the immediate shadow -of his father to the last, lives only now in pictures and in sad musing -dreams of what might have been. - -But William II--the young Kaiser and King--_is_ a reality. He has won no -battles. No antique legends wreathe their romantic mists about him. It -has occurred to no artist to paint him on a palace wall, with the mailed -shadows of mediaeval Barbarossas and Conrads and Sigismunds overhead. - -The group of helmeted warriors who cluster about those two mounted -figures in the Goslar picture, and who, in the popular fancy, bring -down to our own time some of the attributes of mediaeval devotion and -prowess--this group is dispersed now. Moltke, Prince Frederic Charles, -Roon, Manteuffel, and many others are dead; Blumenthal is in -dignified retirement; Bismarck is at Friedrichsruh. New men crowd the -scene--clever organizers, bright and adroit parliamentarians, competent -administrators, but still fashioned quite of our own clay--busy new men -whom we may look at without hurting our eyes. - -For the first time, therefore, it is possible to study this prodigious -new Germany, its rulers and its people, in a practical way, without -being either dazzled by the disproportionate brilliancy of a few -individuals or drawn into side-paths after picturesque unrealities. - -***** - -Three years of this new reign have shown us Germany by daylight -instead of under the glamour and glare of camp fires and triumphal -illuminations. We see now that the Hohenzollern stands out in the far -front, and that the other German royalties, Wendish, Slavonic, heirs -of Wittekind, portentously ancient barbaric dynasties of all sorts, are -only vaguely discernible in the background. During the lifetime of the -old Kaiser it seemed possible that their eclipse might be of only a -temporary nature. Nowhere can such an idea be cherished now. Young -William dwarfs them all by comparison even more strikingly than did his -grandfather. - -They all came to Berlin to do him homage at the opening of the -Reichstag, which inaugurated his reign on June 25, 1888. They will never -make so brave a show again; even then they twinkled like poor tallow -dips beside the shining personality of their young Prussian chief. - -Almost all of them are of royal lines older than that of the -Hohenzollerns. Five of the principal personages among them--the King of -Saxony, the Regent representing Bavaria’s crazy King, the heir-apparent -representing the semi-crazy King of Wurtemberg, the Grand Duke of Baden, -and the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt--owe their titles in their present -form to Napoleon, who paid their ancestors in this cheap coin for -their wretched treason and cowardice in joining with him to crush and -dismember Prussia. Now they are at the feet of Prussia, not indeed in -the posture of conquered equals, but as liveried political subordinates. -No such wiping out of sovereign authorities and emasculation of -sovereign dignities has been seen before since Louis XI consolidated -France 500 years ago. Let us glance at some of these vanishing royalties -for a moment, that we may the better measure the altitude to which the -Hohenzollern has climbed. - -There was a long time during the last century when people looked upon -Saxony as the most powerful and important State in the Protestant part -of Germany. It is an Elector of Saxony who shines forth in history as -Luther’s best friend and resolute protector. For more than a hundred -years thereafter Saxony led in the armed struggles of Protestantism to -maintain itself against the leagued Catholic powers. - -Then, in 1694, there ascended the electoral throne the cleverest and -most showy man of the whole Albertine family, who for nearly thirty -years was to hold the admiring attention of Europe. We can see now that -it was a purblind and debased Europe which believed August _der Starke_ -to be a great man; but in his own times there was no end to what he -thought of himself or to what others thought of him. It was regarded as -a superb stroke of policy when, in 1697, he got himself elected King of -Poland--a promotion which inspired the jealous Elector of Branden-berg -to proclaim himself King of Prussia four years later. August abjured -Protestantism to obtain the Polish crown, and his descendants are -Catholics to this day, though Saxony is strongly Protestant. August -did many wonderful things in his time--made Dresden the superb city of -palaces and museums it is, among other matters, and was the father of -354 natural children, as his own proud computation ran. A tremendous -fellow, truly, who liked to be called the Louis XIV of Germany, and -tried his best to live up to the ideal! - -Contemporary observers would have laughed at the idea that Frederick -William, the surly, bearish Prussian King, with his tobacco orgies and -giant grenadiers, was worth considering beside the brilliant, luxurious, -kingly August. Ah, “gay eupeptic son of Belial,” where is thy dynasty -now? - -There is to-day a King of Saxony, descended six removes from this -August, who is distinctly the most interesting and valuable of these -minor sovereigns. He is a sagacious, prudent, soldierlike man, nominal -ruler of over three millions of people, actual Field Marshal in the -German Army which has a Hohenzollern for its head. Although he really -did some of the best fighting which the Franco-German war called forth, -nobody outside his own court and German military circles knows much -about it, or cares particularly about him. The very fact of his rank -prevents his generalship securing popular recognition. If he had been -merely of noble birth, or even a commoner, the chances are that he -would now be chief of the German General Staff instead of Count -von Schlieffen. Being only a king, his merits as a commander are -comprehended alone by experts. - -There is just a bare possibility that this King Albert may be forced by -circumstances out of his present obscurity. He is only sixty-three years -old, and if a war should come within the next decade and involve defeat -to the German Army in the field, there would be a strong effort made -by the other subsidiary German sovereigns to bring him to the front as -Generalissimo. - -As it is, his advice upon military matters is listened to in Berlin -more than is generally known, but in other respects his position is -a melancholy one. Even the kindliness with which the Kaisers have -personally treated him since 1870, cannot but wear to him the annoying -guise of patronage. He was a man of thirty-eight when his father, King -John, was driven out of Dresden by Prussian troops, along with the royal -family, and when for weeks it seemed probable that the whole kingdom of -Saxony would be annexed to Prussia. Bismarck’s failure to insist upon -this was bitterly criticised in Berlin at the time, and Gustav Frey-tag -actually wrote a book deprecating the further independent existence -of Saxony. Freytag and the Prussians generally confessed their mistake -after the young Saxon Crown Prince’s splendid achievement at Sedan; but -that could scarcely wipe from his memory what had gone before, and -even now, after the lapse of a quarter century, King Albert’s delicate, -clear-cut, white-whiskered face still bears the impress of melancholy -stamped on it by the humiliations of 1866. - -Two other kings lurk much further back in the shadow of the -Hohenzollern--idiotic Otto of Bavaria and silly Charles of Wurtemberg. -Of the former much has been written, by way of complement to the -picturesque literature evoked by the tragedy of his strange brother -Louis’s death. In these two brothers the fantastic Wittelsbach blood, -filtering down from the Middle Ages through strata of princely scrofula -and imperial luxury, clotted rankly in utter madness. - -As for the King of Würtemberg, whose undignified experiences in the -hands of foreign adventurers excited a year or two ago the wonderment -and mirth of mankind, he also pays the grievous penalty of heredity’s -laws. Writing thirty years back, Carlyle commented in this fashion upon -the royal house of Stuttgart: “There is something of the abstruse in -all these Beutelsbachers, from Ulric downwards--a mute _ennui_, an -inexorable obstinacy, a certain streak of natural gloom which no -illumination can abolish; articulate intellect defective: hence a -strange, stiff perversity of conduct visible among them, often marring -what wisdom they have. It is the royal stamp of Fate put upon these -men--what are called fateful or fated men.” * The present King Charles -was personally an unknown quantity when this picture of his house was -drawn. He is an old man now, and decidedly the most “abstruse” of his -whole family. - - * “History of Friedrich II, of Prussia,” book vii. chapter - vi. - -Thus these two ancient dynasties of Southern Germany, which helped to -make history for so many centuries, have come down into the mud. There -is an elderly regent uncle in Bavaria who possesses sense and -respectable abilities; and in Würtemberg there is an heir-apparent of -forty-three, the product of a marriage between first cousins, who is -said to possess ordinary intelligence. These will in time succeed to the -thrones which lunacy and asininity hold now in commission, but no one -expects that they will do more than render commonplace what is now -grotesquely impossible. - -Of another line which was celebrated a thousand years ago, and which -flared into martial prominence for a little in its dying days, when this -century was young, nothing whatever is left. The Fighting Brunswickers -are all gone. - -They had a fair right to this name, had the Guelphs of the old -homestead, for of the forty-five of them buried in the crypt of the -Brunswick Burg Kirche nine fell on the battlefield. This direct line -died out seven years ago with a curiously-original old Duke who bitterly -resented the new order of things, and took many whimsical ways of -showing his wrath. In the sense that he scorned to live in remodeled -Germany, and defied Prussia by ostentatiously exhibiting his sympathy -for the exiled Hanoverian house, he too may be said to have died -fighting. The collateral Guelphs who survive in other lands are anything -but fighters. The Prince of Wales is the foremost living male of the -family, and Bismarck’s acrid jeer that he was the only European Crown -Prince whom one did not occasionally meet on the battlefield, though -unjustly cruel, serves to point the difference between his placid walk -of life and the stormy careers of his mother’s progenitors. Another -Guelph, who is _de jure_ heir to both Brunswick and Hanover--Ernest, -Duke of Cumberland--has a larger strain of the ancestral Berserker -blood, but alas! no weapon remains for him but obdurate sulkiness. He -buries himself in his sullen retreat at Gmunden in uncompromising rage, -and the powers at Berlin have left off striving to placate him with -money--his relatives not even daring now to broach the subject to him. - -And so there is an end to the Fighting Bruns-wickers, and a Hohenzollern -has been put in their stead. Prince Albert of Prussia--a good, wooden, -ceremonious man of large stature, who stands straight in jack boots and -cuirass and is invaluable as an imposing family figure at christenings -and funerals--reigns as Regent in Brunswick. So omnipotent are the -Hohenzollerns grown that he was placed there without a murmur of -protest--and when the time comes for the Prussian octopus to gather in -this duchy, that also will be done in silence. - -Of the sixteen remaining sovereigns-below-the-salt, the Grand Duke of -Baden is a fairly-able and wholly-amiable man, much engrossed in these -latter days in the fact that his wife is the Kaiser’s aunt. This makes -him feel like one of the family, and he takes the aggrandizement of the -Hohenzollerns as quite a personal compliment. The venerable Duke Ernest, -of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, has an active mind and certain qualities which -under other conditions might have made him a power in Germany. But -Bismarck was far too rough an antagonist for him to cope with openly, -and he fell into the feeble device of writing political pamphlets -anonymously against the existing order of things, using the ingenuity of -a jealous woman to circulate them and denying their authorship before -he was accused. This has, of course, been fatal to his influence in the -empire. Duke George, of Saxe-Meiningen, is another able and accomplished -prince, who has devoted his energies and fortune to the establishment -and perfecting of a very remarkable theatrical company. The rest are -mere dead wood--presiding over dull little country Courts, wearing -Prussian uniforms at parades and reviews, and desiring nothing else so -much as the reception of invitations to visit Berlin and shine in the -reflected radiance of the Hohenzollern’s smile. - -The word “invitations” does indeed suggest that the elderly Prince Henry -XIV, of Reuss-Schleiz, should receive separate mention, as having but -recently abandoned a determined feud with Prussia. It is true that -Reuss-Schleiz has only 323 miles of territory and 110,000 people, -but that did not prevent the feud being of an embittered, not to say -menacing, character. When the invitations were sent out for the Berlin -palace celebration of old Kaiser Wilhelm’s ninetieth birthday, in 1887, -by some accident Henry of Reuss-Schleiz was overlooked. There are so -many of these Reusses, all named Henry, all descended from Henry the -Fowler, and all standing so erect with pride that they bend backward! -The mistake was discovered in a day or two and a belated invitation -sent, which Henry grumblingly accepted. On the appointed day he arrived -at the palace in Berlin and went up to the banqueting hall with the -other princes. Being extremely near-sighted, he made a tour of the -table, peering through his spectacles to discover his name-card. Horror -of horrors! No place had been provided for him, and everybody in the -room had observed him searching for one! Trembling with wrath, he -stalked out, brushing aside the chamberlains who essayed to pacify him, -and during that reign he never came to Berlin again. Not death itself -could mollify him, for when Kaiser Wilhelm died the implacable Henry -XIV, who personally owns most of his principality, refused his subjects -a grant of land on which to rear a monument to his memory. But even he -is reconciled to Berlin now. - -Thus with practical completeness had the ancient dynasties of old -Germany been subordinated to and absorbed by the ascendency of the -Hohenzollerns, when young William II stepped upon the throne. Thus, too, -with this passing glance at their abasement or annihilation, the way is -cleared for us to study the young chief of this mighty and consolidated -Empire, to examine his personality and his power, and, by tracing their -growth during the first three years of his reign, to forecast their -ultimate mark upon the history of his time. - - - - - - -CHAPTER II.--WILLIAM’S BOYHOOD - - -[Illustration: 0039] - - -The young Emperor was born in the first month of 1859. The prolonged -life of his grandfather, and the apparently superb physical vitality of -his father, made him seem much further removed from the throne than fate -really intended, and he grew up into manhood with only scant attention -from the general public. There was an unexpressed feeling that he -belonged to the twentieth century, and that it would be time enough -then to study him. When of a sudden the world learned that the stalwart -middle-aged Crown Prince had a mortal malady, and saw that it was a race -toward the grave between him and his venerable father, haste was made -to repair this negligent error, and find out things about the hitherto -unconsidered young man who was to be so prematurely called upon the -stage. Unfortunately, this swift and unexpected shifting of history’s -lime-light revealed young William in extremely repellent colours. Many -circumstances, working together in the shadows behind the throne, had -combined to put him into a temporary attitude toward his parents, which -showed very badly under this sudden and fierce illumination. “Ho, ho! -He is a bad son, then, is he?” we all said, and made up our minds to -dislike him on the spot. Three years have passed, and during that -time many things have happened, many other things have come to light, -calculated to convince us that this early judgment was an over-hasty -one. - -So far as I have been able to learn, the first hint given to the world -that there was a young Prince in Berlin distinctly worth watching -appeared in the book “Sociétiê de Berlin. Par le Comte Paul Vasili,” - published at the end of 1883. This volume was, perhaps, the cleverest of -the anonymous series projected by a Parisian publisher to make money out -of the collected gossip and scandal of the chief European capitals, and -utilized by more than one bright familiar of Mme. Adam’s _salon_ to pay -off old grudges and market afresh moss-grown libels. The authorship -of these books was never clearly established. There is a general -understanding in Berlin that the one about that city was for the most -part written by a Parisian journalist named Gerard, then stationed -in Germany. At all events, the evidence was regarded at the time as -sufficient as to warrant his being chased summarily out of Berlin, while -the book itself was prohibited, confiscated, almost burned by the common -hangman. Perhaps Gerard, if he be still alive, might profitably return -to Berlin now, for to him belongs the credit of having first put into -type an intelligent character study of the young man who now monopolizes -European attention. - -“The Prince William,” said this anonymous writer, “is only twenty-four -years of age. It is, therefore, difficult as yet to say what he will -become; but what is clearly apparent even now is that he is a young -man of promise in mind and head and heart. He is by far the most -intellectual of the Princes of this royal family. Withal courageous, -enterprising, ambitious, hot-headed, but with a heart of gold, -sympathetic in the highest degree, impulsive, spirited, vivacious in -character, and gifted with a talent for repartee in conversation which -would almost make the listener doubt his being a German. He adores the -army, by which he is idolized in return. He has known how, despite his -extreme youth, to win popularity in all classes of society. He is highly -educated, well read, busies his mind with projects for the welfare of -his country, and has a striking keenness of perception for everything -relating to politics. - -“He will certainly, be a distinguished man, and very probably a great -sovereign. Prussia will perhaps have in him a second Frederic II, but -minus his scepticism. In addition, he possesses a fund of gaiety and -good humour that will soften the little angularities of character -without which he would not be a true Hohenzollern. - -“He will be essentially a personal king--never allowing himself to be -blindly led, and ruling with sound and direct judgment, prompt decision, -energy in action, and an unbending will. When he attains the throne, he -will continue the work of his grandfather, and will as certainly undo -that of his father, whatever it may have been. In him the enemies of -Germany will have a formidable adversary; he may easily become the Henri -IV of his country.” - -I have ventured upon this extended extract from a book eight years old -because the prophecy seems a remarkable one--far nearer what we see now -to be the truth than any of the later predictions have turned out to -be. “Paul Vasili” continues his sketch with some paragraphs about the -Prince’s vast penchant for lower-class dissipated females, concluding -with the warning that if ever he comes under the influence of a’ really -able woman “it will be necessary to follow his actions with great -caution.” All this may be unhesitatingly put down to the French writer’s -imagination. - -There is no city where more frankness about talking scandal exists than -in Berlin, yet I have sought in vain to find any justification for this -view of the Kaiser’s character, either past or present. The impression -brought from many talks with people who know him and his life intimately -is that this special accusation is less true of him than of almost any -other prince of his generation. - -William’s boyhood was marked by one innovation in the family traditions -of a Hohenzollern’s training, the importance of which it is not easy -to exaggerate. His father had been the first of these royal heirs to -be sent to a university. He in his turn was the first to go to a public -school. - -It is a solemn and portentous sort of thing--this training of a -Hohenzollern. The progress of the family has been one long, sustained -object lesson to the world on the value of education. No doubt it is in -great part due to the influence of this standing example that Prussia -leads the van of civilization in its proportion of scholars and -teachers, and has made its name a synonym for all that is thorough and -exhaustive in educational systems and theories. The dawn of this notion -of a specially Spartan and severe practical schooling for his heir, in -the primitive and curiously-limited brain of the first King Frederic -William, really marked an era in the world’s conception of what -education meant. - -We have all read, with swift-chasing mirth, wonder, incredulity and -wrath, the stories of the way in which this luckless heir, afterward -to be Frederic the Great, got his education stamped, beaten, burned, -frozen, almost strangled into him. The account reads like a nightmare -of lunatic savagery--yet in it were the germs of a lofty idea. From the -brutal cudgeling, cursing, and manacling of Frederic’s experience grew -the tradition of a unique kind of training for a Hohenzollern prince. -The very violence and wild barbarity of his treatment fixed the -attention of the family upon the theory of education--with very notable -results. - -Historically we are all familiar with the excessive military twist given -to this education of the youths born to be Kings of Prussia. The picture -books are full of portraits of them--quaint little manikins dressed in -officers’ uniforms--stepping from the cradle into war’s paraphernalia. -The picture of the Great Fritz beating a drum at the age of three, of -which the rapturous Carlyle makes so much, has its modern counterpart in -the photographs of the present child Crown Prince, clad in regimentals -and saluting the camera, which are in every Berlin shop window. But -another element of this stern regimen, not so much kept in view, is -the absolute dependence of the son upon the father, or rather the King, -which is insisted upon. - -We know to what abnormal lengths this ran in the youth and early manhood -of Frederic the Great. It did not alter much in the next reign. In 1784, -when this same Frederic was seventy-two years old, a travelling French -noble was his guest at a great review in Silesia. There was also present -the King’s nephew and heir, who two years later was to ascend the throne -as Frederic William II, and who now was in his fortieth year. Yet of -this forty-year-old Prince the Frenchman writes in his diary: “The heir -presumptive lodges at a brewer’s house, and in a very mean way; is not -allowed to sleep from home without permission from the King.” - -The results in this particular instance were not of a flattering kind, -and among the decaying forms of the dying eighteenth century--in an -atmosphere poisoned by the accumulated putridities of that luxurious -and evil epoch--even the Hohenzollern of the next generation was not a -shining success. He was at least, however, much superior to the other -German sovereigns of his time, and he had the unspeakable fortune, -moreover, to be the husband of that Queen Louise who is enshrined as -the patron saint of Prussian history. It was she who engrafted a humane -spirit upon the rough drill-sergeant body of Hohenzollern education. -She made her sons love her--and it seems but yesterday since the last -of these sons, a tottering old man of ninety, used to go to the -Charlottenburg mausoleum on the anniversary of her death, and pray and -weep in solitude beside the recumbent marble effigy of the mother who -had died in 1810. - -The introduction of filial affection into the relation between -Hohenzollern parents and children dates from this Queen Louise, and -belongs to our own century. Before that it was the rule for the heirs -of Prussia to detest their immediate progenitors. From the time of -the Great Elector, every rising generation of this royal house sulked, -cursed under its breath, went into opposition as far as it dared, and -every fading generation disliked and distrusted those who were coming -after it. Nor were these harsh relations confined to sovereign and heir. -Wilhelmine, Margravine of Baireuth, records in her memoirs how, at the -age of six, she was so much surprised at being fondled and caressed by -her mother, on the latter’s return from a prolonged journey, that she -broke a blood vessel. * It seems safe to say that down to the family of -Frederic William III and Louise, no other reigning race in Europe had -ever managed to engender so much bitterness and bad blood between elders -and juniors within its domestic fold. The change then was abrupt. The -two older boys of this family, Frederic William IV and William I, lived -lives as young men which were poems of filial reverence and tenderness. -The cruel misfortunes of the Napoleonic wars made the mutual affection -within this hunted and homeless royal family very sweet and touching. -Perhaps the most interesting of all the reminiscences called forth by -the death of the old Kaiser was furnished by the publication of -the letters he wrote as a young man to his father--that strange -correspondence which reveals him resolutely breaking his own heart and -tearing from it the image of the Princess Radziwill, in loving obedience -to his father’s wish. - - * “Memoirs of Wilhelmine, Margravine of Baireuth,” - translated by H.R.H. Princess Chri of Wilhelmine, Margravine - of Baireuth, translated by H.R.H. Princess Christian, - London, 1887 - -This trait of filial piety did not loom so largely in William’s son, the -late Frederic III, as one or two random allusions in his diary show. And -in his son, in turn, its pulse beats with such varying and intermittent -fervour that sometimes one misses it altogether. - -Young William, as has been said, was the first of his race to be sent -to a public school, the big gymnasium at Cassel being selected for -the purpose. The innovation was credited at the time to the eccentric -liberalizing notions of his mother, the English Crown Princess. The old -Kaiser did not like the idea, and Bismarck vehemently opposed it, but -the parents had their way, and at the age of fifteen the lad went, along -with his twelve-year-old brother Henry, and their tutor, Dr. Hinzpeter. -They were lodged in an old schloss, which had been one of the Electoral -residences, and out of school hours maintained a considerable seclusion. -But in the school itself William was treated quite like any ordinary -citizen’s son. - -It may have been a difficult matter for some of the teachers to act as -if they were unconscious that this particular pupil was the heir of the -Hohenzollerns, but men who were at the school at the time assure me they -did so, with only one exception. This solitary flunkey, knowing that -William was more backward in his Greek than most of his class, sought -to curry favour with the Prince by warning him that the morrow’s -examination was to be, let us say, upon a certain chapter of Xenophon. -The boy William received this hint in silence, but early the next -morning went down to the classroom and wrote upon the blackboard in -big letters the information he had received, so that he might have no -advantage over his fellows. This struck me when I heard it as a curious -illustration of the boy’s character. There seems to have been no excited -indignation at the meanness of the tutor--but only the manifestation of -a towering personal and family pride, which would not allow him to win a -prize through profiting by knowledge withhold from the others. - -During his three years at Cassel William was very democratic in his -intercourse with the other boys. He may have been helped to this by -the fact that he was one of the worst-dressed boys in the school--in -accordance with an ancient family rule which makes the Hohenzollern -children wear out their old clothes in a way that would astonish the -average grocer’s progeny. He was only an ordinary scholar so far as his -studies went. At that time his brother Henry, who went to a different -school, was conspicuously the brighter pupil of the two. Those who were -at Cassel with the future Emperor have the idea that he was contented -there, but he himself, upon reflection, is convinced that he did not -like it. At all events, he gathered there a very intimate knowledge of -the gymnasium system which, as will be seen later on, he now greatly -disapproves. - -At the age of eighteen William left Cassel and entered upon his -university course at Bonn. Here his tutor, Hinzpeter, who had been his -daily companion and mentor from childhood, parted company with him, and -the young Prince passed into the hands of soldiers and men of the world. -The change marks an important epoch in the formation of his character. - -There is a photograph of him belonging to the earlier part of this -Cassel period which depicts a refined, gentle, dreamy-faced German -boy, with a soft, girlish chin, small arched lips with a suggestion of -dimples at the corners, and fine meditative eyes. The forehead, though -not broad, is of fair height and fulness. The dominant effect of the -face is that of sweetness. Looking at it, one instinctively thinks “How -fond that boy’s parents must have been of him!” And they were fond in -the extreme. - -In the Crown Prince Frederic’s diary, written while the German -headquarters were at Versailles, are these words:-- - -“_This is William’s thirteenth birthday. May he grow up to be an able, -honest, and upright man, a true German, prepared to continue without -prejudice what has now been begun! Heaven be praised; between him and -us there is a simple, hearty, and natural relationship, which we shall -strive to preserve, so that he may thus always look upon us as his -best and truest friends. It is really an oppressive reflection when one -realizes what hopes have already been placed on the head of this child, -and how great is our responsibility to the nation for his education, -which family considerations and questions of rank, and the whole -Court life at Berlin and other things will tend to make so much more -difficult_.” - -The retirement of Dr. Hinzpeter from his charge was an event the -significance of which recent occurrences have helped us to appreciate. -When history is called upon to make her final summing up upon William’s -character and career, she will allot a very prominent place to the -influence of this relatively unknown man. A curious romance of time’s -revenge hangs about Dr. Hinzpeter. He is a native of the Westphalian -manufacturing town, Bielefeld, and was a poor young tutor at Darmstadt -when he was recommended to the parents of William as one exceptionally -fitted to take charge of their son. The man who gave this recommendation -was the then Mr. Robert Morier, British Minister at Darmstadt. Nearly a -quarter of a century later Sir Robert Morier was able to see his ancient -and implacable enemy, Bismarck, tripped, thrown, and thrust out of -power, and to sweeten the spectacle by reflecting that he owed this -ideal vengeance to the work of the tutor he had befriended in the old -Darmstadt days. - -It is more than probable that the idea of sending the young Prince to -the Cassel gymnasium originated with Dr. Hinzpeter. At all events, we -know that he held advanced and even extreme views as to the necessity of -emphasizing the popular side of the Hohenzollern tradition. - -This Prussian family has always differed radically from its other German -neighbours in professing to be solicitous for the poor people rather -than for the nobility’s privileges and claims. Sometimes this has sunk -to be a profession merely; more often it has been an active guiding -principle. The lives of the second and third Kings of Prussia are filled -with the most astonishing details of vigilant, ceaseless intermeddling -in the affairs of peasant farmers, artisans, and wage-earners generally, -hearing complaints, spying out injustice, and roughly seeing wrongs -righted. When Prussia grew too big to be thus paternally administered -by a King poking about on his rounds with a rattan and a taker of notes, -the tradition still survived. We find traces of it all along down to our -times in the legislation of the Diet in the direction of what is called -State Socialism. - -Dr. Hinzpeter felt the full inspiration of this tradition. He longed -to make it more a reality in the mind of his princely pupil than it had -ever been before. Thus it was that the lad was sent to Cassel, to sit on -hard benches with the sons of simple citizens, and to get to know what -the life of the people was like. Years afterwards this inspiration was -to bear fruit. - -But in 1877 the work of creating an ideally democratic and popular -Hohenzollern was abruptly interrupted. Dr. Hinzpeter went back to -Bielefeld, and young William entered the University of Bonn. The -soft-faced, gentle-minded boy, still full of his mother’s milk, his -young mind sweetened and strengthened by the dreams of clemency, -compassion, and earnest searchings after duty which he had imbibed from -his teacher, suddenly found himself transplanted in new ground. The -atmosphere was absolutely novel. Instead of being a boy among boys, -he all at once found himself a prince amongst aristocratic toadies. In -place of Hinzpeter, he had a military _aide_ given him for principal -companion, friend, and guide. - -These next few years at the Rhenish university did not, we see now, -wholly efface what Dr. Hinz-peter had done. But they obscured and -buried his work, and reared upon it a superstructure of another sort--a -different kind of William, redolent of royal pretensions and youthful -self-conceit, delighting in the rattle and clank of spurs and swords and -dreaming of battlefields. - -Poor Hinzpeter, in his Bielefeld retreat, could have had but small -satisfaction in learning of the growth of the new William. The parents -at Potsdam, too, who had built such loving hopes upon the tender and -gracious promise of boyhood--they could not have been happy either. - - - - -CHAPTER III.--UNDER CHANGED INFLUENCES AT BONN - -The act of matriculation at Bonn meant to young William many things -apart from the beginning of a university career. In fact, it was almost -a sign of his emancipation from academic studies. He was a student -among students in only a formal sense. The theory of a complete civic -education was respected by his attendance at certain lectures, and by -his perfunctory compliance with sundry university regulations. But, in -reality, he now belonged to the army. He had attained his majority, like -other Prussian princes, at the age of eighteen, and thereupon had been -given his Second Lieutenant’s commission in the First Foot Regiment of -the Guards, where his father had been trained before him. The routine of -his military service, and the exigencies of the martial education which -now supplanted all else, kept him much more in Berlin than at Bonn. - -Both at the Prussian capital and Rhenish university town he now wore his -uniform, his sword, and his epaulets, and, chin well in air, sniffed his -fill of the incense burned before him by the young men of the army. The -glitter and colour of the parade ground, the peremptory discipline, -the sense of power given by these superb wheeling lines and walls of -bayonets and exact geometrical movements as of some mighty machine, -fascinated his imagination. He threw himself into military work with -feverish eagerness. Pacific Cassel, with its gymnasium and the kindly -figure of the tutor, Hinzpeter, faded away into a remote memory of -childhood. - -Public events, meanwhile, had been working out a condition of affairs -which gave a marked importance to this change in William’s character. -The German peoples, having got over the first rapt enthusiasm at -beholding their ancient Frankish enemy rolled in the dust at their -feet, and at finding themselves once more all together under an imperial -German flag, began to devote attention to domestic politics. It was high -time that they did so. - -Prussia had roared as gently as any sucking dove the while the question -was still one of enticing the smaller German States into the federated -empire. But once the Emperor-King felt his footing secure upon the -imperial throne, the old hungry Hohenzollern blood began stirring in his -veins. His great Chancellor, Prince Bismarck, needed no prompting; every -fibre of his bulky frame responded intuitively to this inborn Prussian -instinct of aggrandisement. Together these two began putting the screws -upon the minor States. “Solidifying the Empire” was what they called -their work. The Hohenzollerns were always notable “solidifiers,” as -their neighbours have had frequent occasion to observe tearfully during -the last three centuries. - -The humiliation and expulsion of Austria had been the pivot upon which -the creation of the new Germany turned. In its most obvious aspect -this had appeared to all men to be the triumph of a Protestant over -a Catholic power. Later events had contributed to associate Prussia’s -ascendency with the religious issue. The great OEcumenical Council at -Rome had been followed by a French declaration of war, which every good -Lutheran confidently ascribed to the dictation of the Jesuits. - -These things grouped themselves together in the public mind just as -similar arguments did in England in the days of the Armada. To be a -Catholic grew to seem synonymous with being a sympathizer with Austria -and France. It is an old law of human action that if you persistently -impute certain views to a man, and persecute him on account of them, the -effect is to reconcile his mind to those views. The melancholy history -of theologico-political quarrels is peculiarly filled with examples of -this. The Catholics of Germany were in the main as loyal to the idea of -imperial unity as their Protestant neighbours, and they had shed their -blood quite as freely to establish it as a fact. Their bishops and -priests had over and over again testified by deeds their independence -of Rome in matters which affected them as Germans. But when they found -Bismarck ceaselessly insisting that they were hostile to Prussia, it was -natural enough that they should discover that they did dislike his kind -of a Prussia, and that some of the least cautious among them should say -so. - -Prussia’s answer--coming with the promptness of deliberate -preparation--was the _Kulturkampf_, Into the miserable chaos which -followed we need not go. Bishops were exiled or imprisoned; schools -were broken up and Catholic professors chased from the universities; -a thousand parishes were bereft of their priests; the whole empire was -filled with angry suspicions, recriminations, and violence, hot-tempered -roughness on one side, grim obstinacy of hate on the other--to the joy -of all Germany’s enemies outside and the confusion of all her friends. - -Despotism begets lawlessness, and Bismarck and old William, busy with -their priest hunt, suddenly discovered that out of this disorder had -somehow sprouted a strange new thing called Socialism. They halted -briefly to stamp this evil growth out--and lo! from an upper window -of the beer house on Unter den Linden, called the Three Ravens, the -Socialist Nobiling fired two charges of buckshot into the head and -shoulders of the aged Emperor, riddling his helmet like a sieve and -laying him on a sick bed for the ensuing six months. - -As a consequence, the Crown Prince Frederic was installed as Regent from -June till December of 1878, and from this period dates young William’s -public attitude of antagonism to the policy of his parents. - -For the present we need examine this only in its outer and political -phases. It is too much, perhaps, to say that heretofore there had been -no divisions inside the Hohenzollern family. The Crown Prince and his -English wife had been in tacit opposition to the Kaiser-Chancellor -_régime_ for many years. But this opposition took on palpable form and -substance during the Regency of 1878. - -A new Pope--the present Leo XIII--had been elected only a few -months before, and with him the Regent Frederic opened a personal -correspondence, with a view to compromising the unhappy religious -wrangles which were doing such injury to Germany. The letters written -from Berlin were models of gentle firmness and wise statesmanship, and -they laid a foundation of conciliatory understanding upon which Bismarck -afterward gladly reared his superstructure of partial settlement when -the time came for him to need and bargain for the Clerical vote in the -Reichstag. But at the time their friendly tone gave grave offence to the -Prussian Protestants, and was peculiarly repugnant to the Junker court -circles of Berlin. - -It is no pleasant task to picture to one’s self the grief and chagrin -with which the Regent and his wife must have noted that their elder son -ranged himself among their foes. The change which had been wrought in -him during the year in the regiment and at Bonn revealed itself now -in open and unmistakable fashion. Prince William ostentatiously joined -himself with those who criticised the Regent. He assiduously cultivated -the friendship of the men who led hostile attacks upon his parents. -He had his greatest pride in being known for a staunch supporter of -Bismarck, a firm believer in divine right, Protestant supremacy, and all -the other catchwords of the absolutist party. The praises which these -reactionary people sang in his honour mounted like the fumes of spirits -to his young brain. Instinctively he began posing as the Hope of the -Monarchy--as the providential young prince, handsome, wise and strong, -who was in good time to ascend the throne and gloriously undo all -that the weak dreamer, his father, had done toward liberalizing the -institutions of Prussia and Germany. - -A lamentable and odious attitude this, truly! Yet, which of us was -wholly wise at nineteen? And which of us, it may be added fairly, has -encountered such magnificent and overpowering temptations to foolishness -as these that beset young William? - -Remember that all his associates, alike in his daily routine with his -regiment or at the University and in his larger intercourse among -the aristocratic social circles of Berlin, took only one view of this -subject. At their head were Bismarck, the most powerful and impressive -personality in Europe, and the aged Emperor, the one furiously -inveighing against the manner in which the Protestant religion and -political security were being endangered, the other deploring from his -sick-bed the grievous inroads which were threatened upon the personal -rights and prerogatives of the Hohenzollerns. - -It is not strange that young William adopted the opinion of his -grandfather and of Bismarck, chiming as it did with the new impulses of -militarism that had risen so strongly within him, and being re-echoed, -as it was, from the lips of all his friends. - -But the event of this brief Regency which most clearly marked the -chasm separating the Crown Prince from the Junker circles of his son’s -adoption, was the appointment of Dr. Friedberg to high office. And this -is particularly worth studying, because its effects are still felt in -German social and political life. - -Dr. Friedberg was then a man of sixty-five, and one of the most -distinguished jurists of Germany. He had adorned a responsible post in -the Ministry of Justice for over twenty years, and had written numerous -valuable works, those relating to his special subject of prison reform -and the efficacy of criminal law in social improvement standing in the -very front rank of literature of that kind. His promotion, however, -had been hopelessly blocked by two considerations; he was professedly a -Liberal in politics and a close friend of the Crown Prince and Princess, -and, what was still worse, he was a Jew. - -On the second day of his Regency, Frederic astounded and scandalized -aristocratic Berlin by appointing Dr. Friedberg to the highest -judicial-administrative post in the kingdom. To glance forward for a -moment, it may be noted that when old Kaiser Wilhelm returned to active -power in December, he refused to remove Friedberg, out of a feeling -of loyalty to his son’s actions as Regent. But he vented his wrath in -another way by conspicuously neglecting to give Friedberg the Black -Eagle after he had served nine years in the Ministry, though all his -associates obtained the decoration upon only six years’ service. This -slight upon the Hebrew Minister explains the well-remembered action of -Frederic, when he was on his journey home from San Remo to ascend the -throne after his father’s death:--as the Ministerial delegation met his -train at Leipsic, and entered the carriage, he took the Black Eagle from -his own neck and placed it about that of Friedberg. - -This action of the emotional sick man, returning through the March -snowstorm to play his brief part of phantom Kaiser, created much talk in -Germany three years ago, and Friedberg, upon the strength of it, plumed -himself greatly as the chief friend of the new monarch. He was the first -Jew ever decorated by that exalted and exclusive Black Eagle--and during -the short reign of ninety-nine days he held himself like the foremost -man in the Empire. - -It is a melancholy reflection that this mean-spirited old man, as soon -as Frederic died, made haste to lend himself to the work of blackening -his benefactor’s memory. He had owed more to Frederic’s friendship and -loyalty than any other in Germany, and he requited the debt to the dead -Kaiser with such base ingratitude that even Frederic’s enemies were -disgusted, and, under the pressure of general disfavour, he had soon to -quit his post. But enough of Friedberg’s unpleasant personality. Let us -return to 1878. - -The Regent’s action in giving Prussia a Jewish Minister lent an enormous -original impulse to the anti-Semitic movement in Berlin, which soon grew -into a veritable _Judenhetze_. This Jewish question, while it ran its -course of excitement in Germany, completely dwarfed the earlier clerical -issue, just as it in turn has been submerged by the rising tide of -Socialistic agitation. But though the anti-semitic party has ceased to -exert any power at the polls the feeling back of it is still a potent -factor in Berlin life. - -In the new Berlin, of which I shall speak presently, the Jews occupy -a more commanding and dominant position than they have ever had in any -other important city since the fall of Jerusalem. For this the Germans -have themselves largely to blame. The military bent of the ascendant -Prussians has warped the whole Teutonic mind toward unduly glorifying -the army. The prizes of German upper-class life are all of a military -sort. Every nobleman’s son, every bright boy in the wealthier citizens’ -stratum, aspires to the uniform. The tacit rule which excludes the Jews -from positions in this epauletted aristocracy drives them into the other -professions. They may not wear the sword: they revenge themselves by -owning the vast bulk of the newspapers, by writing most of the books, by -almost monopolizing law, medicine, banking, architecture, engineering, -and the more intellectual branches of the civil service. - -This preponderance of Hebrews in the liberal professions seems unnatural -to the Tory German, who has vainly tried to break it down by political -action and by social ostracism. These attempts in turn have thrown the -Jews into opposition. Of the seven Israelites in the present Reichstag -six are Socialist Democrats and one is a Freisinnige leader. Every paper -in Germany owned or edited by a Jew is uncompromisingly Radical in its -politics. This in turn further exasperates the German Tories and keeps -alive the latent fires of hatred which bigots like Stocker from time to -time fan into flame. - -In finance, too, the German aristocrats find themselves getting more and -more helplessly into Jewish hands. Their wonderful new city of Berlin -not only acts as a sieve for the great wave of Hebrew migration steadily -moving westward from Russia, but it is becoming the Jewish banking and -money centre of Europe. The grain trade of Russia is concentrated in -Berlin. To buy wheat from Odessa you apply to one of the three hundred -Jewish middleman firms at Berlin. To borrow money in Europe you go with -equal certainty to Berlin. The German nobleman was never very rich; he -has of late years become distinctly poor--and all the mortgages which -mar his sleep o’ nights are locked in Jewish safes at Berlin. - -To revenge himself the German aristocrat can only assume an added -contempt for literature and the peaceful professions generally because -they are Jewish; insist more strongly than ever that the army is the -only place for German gentlemen because it is not Jewish, and dream of -the time when a beneficent fate shall once more hand Jerusalem over to -conquest and rapine. - -This German nobleman, however, does not disdain in the meanwhile to -lend himself to the spoliation of the loathed tribes when chance offers -itself. There is a famous Jewish banker in Berlin, who, in his senile -years, is weak enough to desire social position for his children. One -of his sons, a stupid and debauched youngster, is permitted to associate -with sundry fashionable German officers--just up to the point where -he loses his money to them with sufficient regularity--and, of course, -never gets an inch beyond that point. - -A daughter of this old banker had an even more disastrous experience. -She was an ugly girl, but with her enormous dower the ambitious parents -were able to buy a titled husband in the person of a penniless German -Baron. Delighted with this success, the banker settled upon the couple a -handsome estate in Silesia, The Baron and his bride were provided with -a special train to convey them to their future home, and in that very -train the Baron installed his mistress, and with her a lawyer friend -who had already arranged for the sale of the estate. The Jewish bride -arrived in Silesia to find herself contemptuously deserted by her -husband and robbed of her estate. She returned to Berlin, obtained -a divorce, and as soon as might be was married again--this time to a -diamond merchant of her own race. - -As for the Baron who perpetrated this unspeakably brutal and callous -outrage, I did not learn that he had lost caste among his friends by the -exploit. Indeed, the story was told to me as a merry joke on the Jews. - -Prince Bismarck, almost alone among the Junker group, did not associate -himself with this anti-Semitic agitation. In the work which he was -carrying forward Jewish bankers were extremely useful. Both in a visibly -regular way, and by subterranean means, capitalists like Bleichroder -played a most important part in his performance of the task of -centralizing power at Berlin. Hence he always held aloof from the -movement against the Jews, and on occasions made his dislike for it -manifest. - -Doubtless it was his counsel which restrained the impetuous young -William from openly identifying himself with this bigoted and -proscriptive demonstration. At all events, the youthful Prince avoided -any overt sign of his sympathy with the anti-Jewish outcry, yet -continued to find all his friends among the class which supported the -_Judenhetze_. It seems a curious fact now that in those days he created -the impression of a silent and reserved young man--almost taciturn. -As to where his likes and dislikes lay, no uncertainty existed. He was -heart and soul with the aristocratic Court party and against all the -tendencies and theories of the small academic group attached to his -father. He made this obvious enough by his choice of associations, but -kept a dignified curb on his tongue. - -In addition to his course of studies at Bonn and his practical labours -with his regiment, the Prince devoted a set amount of time each week to -instruction of a less common order. He had regular weekly appointments -with two very distinguished professors--the Emperor William, who spoke -on Kingcraft, and Chancellor Bismarck, whose theme was Statecraft. The -former series of discourses was continued almost without intermission, -even during the old Kaiser’s period of retirement after Nobiling’s -attempt on his life. The Prince saw these eminent instructors regularly, -but it did not enter into their scheme of education that he should -profess to learn anything from his father. - -Among the ideas which the impressionable young man imbibed from Bismarck -there could be nothing calculated to increase his filial affection or -respect. Bismarck had cherished a bitter dislike for the English -Crown Princess, conceived even before her marriage, at a time when -she represented to him only the girlish embodiment of an impolitic -matrimonial alliance, and strengthened year by year after she came to -Berlin to live. He did not scruple to charge to a conspiracy between her -and the Empress Augusta all the political obstacles which from time to -time blocked his path. He not only believed, but openly declared, that -the Crown Princess was responsible for the whole Arnim episode; and it -is an open secret that even the State papers emanating from the German -Foreign Office during his Chancellorship contain the grossest and most -insulting allusions to her. As for the Crown Prince, Bismarck was at no -pains to conceal his contempt for one of whom he habitually thought as a -henpecked husband. - -Enough of this feeling about his parents must have filtered through into -young William’s mind, from his intercourse with the powerful Chancellor, -to render any reassertion of parental influence impossible. - -In the summer of 1880 the Emperor and his Chancellor decided that it -was time for their pupil to marry, and they selected for his bride an -amiable, robust and comely-faced German princess of the dispossessed -Schleswig-Holstein family. I gain no information anywhere as to -William’s parents having been more than formally consulted in this -matter--and no hint that William himself took any deep personal interest -in the transaction. The marriage ceremony came in February of 1881, and -William was now installed in a residence of his own--the pretty little -Marble Palace at Potsdam. His daily life remained otherwise unaltered. -He worked hard at his military and civil tasks, and continued to -pose--not at all through mere levity of character, but inspired by a -genuine, if misguided, sense of duty--as the darling of all reactionary -elements in modern Germany. - - - - -CHAPTER IV.--THE TIDINGS OF FREDERIC’S DOOM - -Six years of married and semi-independent life went by, and left Prince -William of Prussia but little changed. He worked diligently up through -the grades of military training and responsibility, fulfilling all the -public duties of his position with exactness, but showing no inclination -to create a separate _rôle_ in the State for himself. The young men -of the German upper and middle classes, alive with the new spirit of -absolutism and lust for conquest with which boyish memories of 1870 -imbued their minds, looked toward him and spoke of him as their leader -that was to be when their generation should come into its own--but -that seemed something an indefinite way ahead. He could afford to wait -silently. - -His summer home at Marmorpalais, charmingly situated on the shore of the -Heiligen Sea at Potsdam, did not in any obvious sense become a political -centre. The men who came to it were chiefly hard-working officers, and -the talk of their scant leisure, over wine and cigars, was of military -tasks, hunting experiences, and personal gossip rather than of graver -matters. The library, which was William’s workroom in these days, has -most of its walls covered with racks arranged to hold maps, presumably -for strategic studies and _Kriegspiel_ work. The next most important -piece of furniture in the room is a tall cabinet for cigars. The -bookcase is much smaller. - -When winter came Prince William and his family returned to their -apartments in the Schloss at Berlin. Nurses clad in the picturesque -Wendish dress of the Spreewald bore an increasing prominent part in this -annual exodus from Potsdam--for almost every year brought its new male -Hohenzollern. - -Thus the early spring of 1887 found William, now past his twenty-eighth -year, a major, commanding a battalion of Foot guards, the father of four -handsome, sturdy boys, and two lives removed from the throne. - -Then came, without warning, one of those terrible, world-changing -moments wherein destiny reveals her face to the awed beholder--moments -about which the imagination of the outside public lingers with curiosity -forever unsatisfied. No one will ever tell what happens in that -soul-trying instant of time, We shall never know, for example, just what -William felt and thought one March day in 1887, when somebody--identity -unknown to us as well--whispered in his ear that the Crown Prince, his -father, had a cancer in the throat. - -The world heard this sinister news some weeks later, and was so grieved -at the intelligence that for over a year thereafter it fostered the -hope of its falsity, and was even grateful to courtier physicians and -interested flatterers who encouraged this hope. Civilization had elected -Frederic to a place among its heroes, and clung despairingly to the -belief that his life might, after all, be saved. - -But in the inner family circle of the Hohenzollerns there was from the -first no illusion on this point. The old Emperor and his Chancellor and -the Prince William knew that the malady was cancerous. Their information -came from Ems, whither Frederic went upon medical advice in the spring -of 1887, to be treated for “a bad cold with bronchial complications.” - Later a strenuous and determined attempt was made to represent the -disease as something else, and out of this grew one of the most painful -and cruel domestic tragedies known to history. At this point it is -enough to say that the Emperor and his grandson knew about the cancer -before even rumours of it reached the general public, and that their -belief in its fatal character remained unshaken throughout. - -To comprehend fully and fairly what followed, it will be necessary to -try to look at Frederic through the eyes of the Court party. The view -of him which we of England and America take has been, beyond doubt, of -great and lasting service to the human race--in much the same sense that -the world has been benefited by the idealized purities and sweetnesses -of the Arthurian legend. We are helped by our heroes in this practical, -work-a-day, modern world as truly as were our pagan fathers who followed -the sons of Woden. Every one of us is the richer and stronger for this -image of Frederic the Noble which the English-speaking peoples have -erected in their Valhalla. - -But it is fair to reflect, on the other hand, that this fine, handsome, -able, and good-hearted Prince could not have created for himself such -hosts of hostile critics in his own country, could not have continually -found himself year by year losing his hold upon even the minority of his -fellow-countrymen, without reason. It is certain that in 1886--the -year before his illness befell--he had come to a minimum of usefulness, -influence, and popularity in the Empire. Deplore this as we may, it -would be unintelligent to refuse to inquire into its causes. - -Moreover, we are engaged upon the study of a living man, holding a great -position, possibly destined to do great things. All our thoughts of -this living man are instinctively coloured by prejudices based upon his -relations with his father, who is dead. Justice to William demands that -we shall strive fairly to get at the opinions and feelings which swayed -him and his advisers in their attitude of antagonism to our hero, his -father. - -[Illustration: 0076] - -His critics say that Frederic was an actor. They do not insist upon -his insincerity--in fact, for the most part credit him with honesty and -candour--but regard him as the victim of hereditary histrionism. His -mother, the late Empress Augusta, had always impressed Berliners in -the same way--as playing in the _rôle_ of an exiled Princess, with -her little property Court accessories, her little tea-party circle -of imitation French _littérateurs_, and her “Mrs. Haller” sighs and -headshakings over the coarseness and cruelty of the big roaring world -outside. And her grandfather was that play-actor gone mad, Czar Paul of -Russia, who tore the passion so into tatters that his own sons rose and -killed him. - -Once given the key to this view of Frederic’s character, a strange cloud -of corroborative witnesses are at hand. Take one example. Most of the -pictures of him drawn at the period of his greatest popularity--during -and just after the Franco-German war--pourtray him with a long-bowled -porcelain pipe in his hand. The artists in the field made much of this: -every war correspondent wrote about it. The effect upon the public -mind was that of a kindly, unostentatious, pipe-loving burgher--and -so lasting was it that when, seventeen years later, he was attacked by -cancer, many good people hastened to ascribe it to excessive smoking. -I had this same notion, too, and therefore was vastly surprised, in -Berlin, years after, when a General Staff officer told me that Frederic -rather disliked tobacco. I instanced the familiar pictures of him with -his pipe. The instant reply was: “Ah, yes, that was like him. He -always carried a pipe about at headquarters to produce an impression of -comradeship on the soldiers, although it often made him sick.” - -It was hard work to credit this theory--until it was confirmed by a -passage in Sir Morell Mackenzie’s book. In response to the physician’s -question, Frederic said the report of his being a great smoker was -“quite untrue, and that for many years he had hardly smoked at all.” He -added that probably this report, coming from soldiers who had seen him -sometimes solacing himself after a hard-fought battle with a pipe, had -given him his “perfectly undeserved reputation” as a devotee of tobacco.* - - * “The Fatal Illness of Frederic the Noble,” p. 20. - -But the most striking illustrations of this trait, which Germans -suspected in Frederic, are given in Gustav Freytag’s interesting book, -“The Crown Prince and the Imperial Crown.” It may be said in passing -that even among Conservatives in Berlin there is a feeling that Freytag -should not have published this book. No doubt it tells the truth, but -then Freytag owed very much to the tender friendship and liking of -Frederic, who conspicuously favoured him above other German writers, and -wrote kindly things about him in his diary--and, if the truth had to be -told, some other than Freytag should have told it. Coupled as it is in -the public mind with Dr. Friedberg’s desertion, heretofore spoken of, -this behaviour of another of the dead Prince’s friends is felt to -help justify the low opinion of German gratitude held among scoffing -neighbours. As a Berlin official said in comment to the writer: “When -men like Friedberg and Freytag do these things to the memory of their -dead patron, it is no wonder that foreigners call us Prussians a pack of -wolves, ready always to leap upon and devour any comrade who is down.” - -Freytag was the foremost correspondent attached to Frederic’s -headquarters in 1870-71, and enjoyed the confidence of the Crown Prince -in extraordinary measure. Thus he is able to give us a detailed picture -of the man’s moods and mental workings, day by day, during that eventful -time. And this picture is a perfect panorama of varying phases of -histrionism. - -The Crown Prince was sedulously cultivating the popular impression of -himself as a plain, hail-fellow-well-met, friendly Prince. But -Freytag says: “The traditional conception of rank and position dwelt -ineradicably in his soul; when he had occasion to remember his own -claims, he stood more vehemently on his dignity than others of his -class.... Had destiny allowed him a real reign, this peculiarity would -probably have shown itself in a manner unpleasantly surprising to his -contemporaries.” * - - * “The Crown Prince and the German Imperial Crown,” by - Gustav Freytag, p. 27. - -More important still is this remark on the following page: “The idea of -the German Empire grew out of princely pride in his soul; it became an -ardent wish, and I think he was the originator and motive power of this -innovation.” - -The fact that it was Frederic who conceived the idea of the Empire first -came to the world when Dr. Geffcken printed that famous portion of the -Crown Prince’s diary which led to prosecutions and infinite scandal. -Freytag’s subsequent publication surrounds the fact with most curious -minutiae of detail. - -As early as August 1st, before his Third Army had even crossed the -Rhine, Frederic had broached the idea of an empire, with Prussia at its -head. All through the campaign which followed his head was full of it. -He busied his mind with questions of titles, precedence, &c., to grow -out of the new creation. One afternoon--August 11th--he strolled on the -hillside with Freytag for a talk. “He had put on his general’s cloak so -that it fell around his tall figure like a king’s mantle, and had thrown -around his neck the gold chain of the Hohenzollern order, which he was -not wont to wear in the quiet of the camp--and paced elated along the -village green. Filled with the importance which the emperor idea had for -him, he evidently adapted his external appearance to the conversation.” - During this talk he asked what the new title of the King of Prussia -should be, and the anti-imperialist Freytag suggested Duke of Germany. -Then “the Crown Prince broke out with emphasis, his eyes flashing: ‘No! -he must be Emperor!’” * To create this empire Frederic was quite ready -to forcibly coerce the Southern German States. Bismarck and William -I., whom we think of as rough, hard, arbitrary men, shrank from even -considering such a course. To the enthusiastic and slightly unreal -Frederic it seemed the most natural thing in the world. The account in -his diary of the long interview of Nov. 16, 1870, with Bismarck makes -all this curiously clear. “What about the South Germans? Would you -threaten them, then?” asks the Chancellor. “Yes, indeed!” answers our -ideal constitutional Frederic, with a light heart. The interview was -protracted and stormy, Bismarck ending it by resort to his accustomed -trick of threatening to resign, a well-worn device which twenty years -later was to be used just once too often. - - * Freytag, p. 20. - -In this same diary, under date of the following March (1871), Frederic -writes: “I doubt whether the necessary uprightness exists for the free -development of the Empire, and think that only a new epoch, which shall -one day come to terms with me, will see that.... More especially I shall -be the first Prince who has to appear before his people after having -honourably declared for constitutional methods without any reserve.” - -One feels that these two passages from his own diary--the utterances of -November and the reflections of March--show distinctly why the practical -rulers, soldiers, and statesmen of Prussia distrusted Frederic. They saw -him more eager and strenuous about grasping the imperial dignity than -any one else--willing even to break treaties and force Bavaria, Saxony, -and Würtemberg into the empire at the cannon’s mouth, and then they -heard him lamenting that until he came to the throne there would not -be enough “uprightness” to insure The Empress Frederic “constitutional -methods.” Candidly, it is impossible to wonder at their failure to -reconcile the two. - -[Illustration: 0084] - -An even more acute reason for this suspicion and dislike lay in -Frederic’s relations with the English Court. To begin with, there was -a sensational and fantastic uxoriousness about his attitude toward his -wife which could not command sympathy in Germany. Freytag tells of his -lying on his camp bed watching the photographs of his wife and children -on the table before him, with tears in his eyes, and rhapsodizing -about his wife’s qualities of heart and intellect to the newspaper -correspondent, until Freytag promised to dedicate his next book to her. -“He gave me a look of assent and lay back satisfied.” This in itself -would rather pall on the German taste. - -Worse still, Frederic used to write long letters home to his wife every -day--often the work of striking the camp would be delayed until these -epistles could be finished--and then the Crown Princess at Berlin would -as regularly send the purport of these to her royal relatives in England -and thence it would be telegraphed to France. Bismarck always believed, -or professed to believe, that there was concerted treachery in this -business. No one else is likely to credit this assumption. But at -all events the fact is that this embarrassing diffusion of news was -discovered and complained of at the time, and charged against Frederic, -and was the reason, as Bismarck bluntly declared during the discussion -over the diary, why the Crown Prince was not trusted by his father or -allowed to share state secrets. - -As for the Empire itself, though the original idea of it was his, -Frederic suffered the fate of many other inventors in having very -little to do with it after it was put into working order. He presented a -magnificently heroic figure on horseback in out-of-door spectacles, and -his cultured tastes made the task of presiding over museums and learned -societies congenial. But there his participation in public affairs -ended. - -The Empire he had dreamed of was of a wholly different sort from -this prosaic, machine-like, departmental structure which Bismarck -and Delbruck made. Frederic’s vision had been of some splendid, -picturesque, richly-decorated revival of the Holy Roman Empire. There -are a number of delightful pages in Freytag’s book giving the Crown -Prince’s romantic views on this point. * When the first Reichstag met in -1871, to acclaim the new Emperor in his own capital, Frederic introduced -into the ceremony the ancient throne chair of the Saxon Emperors, which -may now be seen in Henry’s palace at Goslar, and which, having lain -unknown for centuries in a Harz village, was discovered by being offered -for sale by a peasant as old metal some seventy years ago. - - * Fryetag, pp. 115-130. - -Among practical Germans this attempt to link their new Empire with the -discredited and disreputable old fabric, which had been too rotten for -even the Hapsburgs to hold together, was extremely distasteful. Yet -Frederic clung to this pseudo-mediævalism to the last. When he came to -the throne as Kaiser his first proclamation spoke of “the re-established -Empire.” And those who were in Berlin at the time know how a whole day’s -delay was caused by the dissension over what title the new ruler should -assume--the secret of which was that he desired to call himself Kaiser -Friedrich IV, thus going back for imperial continuity to that Friedrich -III who died while Martin Luther was a boy, and who is remembered -only because he was the father of the great Max and was the original -possessor of the Austrian under lip. - -Freytag indeed says that to that first proclamation Frederic did affix a -signature with an IV--the assumption being that Bismarck altered it. - -The reader has been shown this less satisfying aspect of Frederic, as -his associates saw him, because without understanding it the attitude of -both his father and his son towards him would be flatly unintelligible. -They did not believe that he would make a safe Emperor for Germany. - -The old William all the same loved his son deeply, and manifested an -almost extravagant delight at the creditable way in which he carried -himself through the Bohemian and French campaigns. In the succeeding -years of peace it is obvious enough that the venerable Kaiser grew -despondent about his son’s association with Radicals and their -dreams--and it is equally clear that there were plenty of advisers at -hand to confirm the old man in these gloomy doubts. Hence, though he -cherished a sincere affection for “Unser Fritz” and his English wife, -and would gladly have had them much about him, he could not help being -of the party opposed to them--the party which lost no opportunity of -exalting young William in his grandfather’s eyes as the real hope of -the Hohenzollerns. Thus there was a growing, though tacit, estrangement -between the father and son. - -When Frederic was stricken with disease, however, the kindly old father -suffered keenly. There was great sweetness of nature in the tough -martial frame of William I, and there is an abiding pathos in the -picture we have of his last moments--the stout nonogenarian who fought -death so valiantly even to his last breath that it seemed as if he could -not die, rolling his white head on the pillow, and moaning piteously, -“Poor Fritz! Poor Fritz!” with his rambling thoughts beyond the -snow-clad Alps, where his son was also in the destroyer’s grasp. - -As for young William, his estrangement from his father, if less noted, -had been more complete. He belonged openly to another party, and -moreover smarted under the reproach of being unfilial, which the friends -of his parents, largely of the writing and printing class, publicly -levelled at him. - -Placed in this position, the shock of the news that his father had an -incurable disease must have come upon him with peculiar force. We can -only dimly imagine to ourselves the great struggles fought out in -his breast between grief for the father, who had really been an ideal -parent, loving, gentle, solicitous, and tenderly proud, and concern for -the Empire, which might be doomed to have a wasting invalid at its head -for years. On the one side was the repellent thought that this father’s -death would mean his own swift advancement, for the grandfather could -clearly live but little longer. On the other side, if his father’s life -was prolonged, it meant the elevation to the throne of a sick man, whose -fitness for the crown of this armed and beleaguered nation would at all -times have been doubtful, and who, in his enfeebled state, at the mercy -of the radical agitators and adventurers about him, might jeopardize the -fortunes of Empire and dynasty alike. - -Torn between these conflicting views, it is not strange that William -welcomed a middle course, suggested, I am authoritatively informed, by -Frederic himself. - -The Crown Prince returned to Berlin from Ems thoroughly frightened. He -had no doubt whatever that he was suffering from cancer and expected -to die within the year. Like all men of an expansive and impressionable -temperament, he was subject to fits of profound melancholia--as Freytag -puts it, “fond of indulging in gloomy thoughts and pessimistic humours;” - so much so that he “sometimes cherished the idea of renouncing the -throne, in case of its being vacant, and leaving the government to his -son.” * He had grown lethargic and dispirited through years of inaction -and systematic exclusion from governmental labours and interests. He -returned from Ems now, in this April of 1887, in a state of complete -depression. - - * Freytag, p. 78, - -The evident affection and sympathy with which both his father and son -received him, gave an added impulse to the despairing ideas which -had conquered his mind since his sentence of death by cancer had been -uttered. - -In the course of a touching interview between the three Hohenzollerns, -Frederic with tears in his eyes declared that he did not desire to -reign, and that if by chance he survived his father he would waive his -rights of succession in favour of his elder son. This declaration -was within a brief space of time repeated in the presence of Prince -Bismarck, and was by him reduced to writing. The paper was deposited -among the official private archives of the Crown at Berlin, and -presumably is still in existence there. - - - - -CHAPTER V.--THROUGH THE SHADOWS TO THE THRONE - -The fact that the Crown Prince Frederic, despondent and unnerved in -the presence of a mortal disease, had voluntarily pledged himself to -renounce his rights of succession, was naturally not published to the -world. Although it is beyond doubt that such a pledge was given, nothing -more definite than a roundabout hint has to this day been printed in -Germany upon the subject. There are no means of ascertaining the exact -number of personages in high position to whom this intelligence was -imparted at the time. As has been said, the Emperor, the Chancellor, -and the young heir were parties to Frederic’s original action. Certain -indications exist that for a time the secret was kept locked in the -breasts of these four men. Then Frederic confessed to his wife what he -had done. - -The strangest feature of this whole curious business is that Frederic -should ever have taken this gravely important step, not only without his -wife’s knowledge, but against all her interests. Her influence over -him was of such commanding completeness, and his devotion to her so -dominated his whole career and character, that the thing can only be -explained by laying stress upon his admitted tendency to melancholia and -assuming that his shaken nerves collapsed under the emotional strain of -meeting his father and son with sympathetic tears in their eyes. - -With the moment when the wife first learned of this abdication the -active drama begins. She did not for an instant dream of suffering the -arrangement to be carried out--at least until every conceivable form -of resistance had been exhausted. We can fancy this proud, energetic -princess casting about anxiously here, there, everywhere, for means with -which to fight the grimly-powerful combination against her husband’s -future and her own, and can well believe that in the darkest hour of the -struggle which ensued this true daughter of the Fighting Guelphs never -lost heart. - -For friends it was hopeless to look anywhere in Germany. She had lived -in Berlin and Potsdam for nearly thirty years, devoting her large -talents and wide sympathies to the encouragement of literature, science, -and the arts, to the inculcation of softening and merciful thoughts -embodied in new hospitals, asylums, and charitable institutions, and -the formation of orders of nurses; most earnestly of all, to the task -of lifting the women of Germany up in the domestic and social scale, -and making of them something higher than mere mothers of families and -household drudges. Nobody thanked her for her pains, least of all -the women she had striven to befriend. Her undoubted want of tact and -reserve in commenting upon the foibles of her adopted countrymen kept -her an alien in the German mind, in spite of everything she did to -foster a kindlier attitude. The feelings of the country at large were -passively hostile to her. The influential classes hated her vehemently. - -That she should link together in her mind this widespread and -assiduously-cultivated enmity to her, and this new and alarming -conspiracy to keep her husband from the throne, was most natural. She -leaped to the conclusion that it was all a plot, planned by her ancient -and implacable foe, Bismarck. That her own son was in it made the thing -more acutely painful, but only increased her determination to fight. - -Instinctively she turned to her English home for help. Although nearly -two centuries have passed since George I entered upon his English -inheritance, and more than half a century has gone by since the last -signs of British dominion were removed from Hanover, the dynastic family -politics of Windsor and Balmoral remain almost exclusively German. In -all the confused and embittered squabbles which have kept the royal and -princely houses of Germany by the ears since the close of the Napoleonic -wars, the interference of the British Guelph has been steadily pitted -against the influence of the Prussian Hohenzollern. Hardly one of the -changes which, taken altogether, have whittled the reigning families of -Germany from thirty down to a shadowy score since 1820, has been made -without the active meddling of English royalty on one side or the -other--most generally on the losing side. Hence, while it was natural -that the Crown Princess should remember in her time of sore trial that -she was also Princess Royal in England, it was equally to be expected -that Germany should prepare itself to resent this fresh case of British -intermeddling. - -The scheme of battle which the Crown Princess, in counsel with her -insular relatives, decided upon was at once ingenious and bold. It could -not, unfortunately, be gainsaid that her husband, Frederic, had formally -pledged himself to relinquish the crown _if_ he proved to be afflicted -with a mortal disease. Very well; the war must be waged upon that “if”. - -A good many momentous letters had crossed the North Sea, heavily sealed -and borne by trusted messengers, before the system of defence was -disclosed by the first overt movement. On the 20th of May, 1887, -Dr. Morell Mackenzie, the best known of London specialists in throat -diseases, arrived in Berlin, and was immediately introduced to a -conference of German physicians, heretofore in charge of the case, as -a colleague who was to take henceforth the leading part. They told him -that to the best of their belief they had to deal with a cancer, but -were awaiting his diagnosis. On the following day, and a fortnight -later, he performed operations upon the illustrious patient’s throat to -serve as the basis for a microscopical examination. With his forceps he -drew out bits of flesh, which were sent to Prof. Virchow for scientific -scrutiny. Upon examining these Prof. Virchow reported he discovered -nothing to “excite the suspicion of wider and graver disease,” * thus -giving the most powerful support imaginable to Dr. Mackenzie’s diagnosis -of “a benign growth.” - - * Mackenzie’s “Frederic the Noble,” p. 34. - -The German physicians allege that Dr. Mackenzie drew out pieces of the -comparatively healthful right vocal cord. The London specialist denies -this. Nothing could be further from the purpose of this work than to -take sides upon any phase of the unhappy and undignified controversy -which ensued. It is enough here to note the charge, as indicating the -view which Prof. Gerhardt and his German colleagues took from the first -of Mackenzie’s mission in Berlin. - -This double declaration against the theory of cancer having been -obtained, the next step was to secure the removal of Frederic. The -celebration of the Queen’s jubilee afforded a most valuable occasion. He -came to England on June 14th--and he never again stepped foot in Berlin -until he returned as Kaiser the following year. Nearly three months were -spent at Norwood, and in Scotland and the Isle of Wight. A brief stop -in the Austrian Tyrol followed, and then the Crown Prince settled in his -winter home at San Remo. On the day of his arrival there Mackenzie was -telegraphed for, as very dangerous symptoms had presented themselves. -He reached San Remo on November 5, 1887, and discovered so grave a -situation that Prince William was immediately summoned from Berlin. - -That the young Prince had been placed in a most trying position by -the quarrel which now raged about his father’s sick-room, need not be -pointed out. The physicians who stood highest in Berlin, and who were -backed by the liking and confidence of William’s friends, were deeply -indignant at having been superseded by two Englishmen like Mackenzie and -Hovell. This national prejudice became easily confounded with partisan -antagonisms. The Germans are not celebrated for calm, or for skill in -conducting controversies with delicacy, and in this instance the worst -side of everybody concerned was exhibited. - -One recalls now with astonishment the boundless rancour and recklessness -of accusation which characterized that bitter wrangle. Many good people -of one party seriously believed that the German physicians wanted to -gain access to Frederic in order to kill him. On the other hand, a -great number insisted that Mackenzie was deceiving the public, and had -subjected Frederic to the most terrible maimings and tortures in order -to conceal from Germany the fact of the cancer. The basest motives were -ascribed by either side to the other. The Court circle asked what they -were doing, then, to the Crown Prince that they hid him away in Italy; -the answering insinuation was that very good reasons existed for not -allowing him to fall into the hands of the Berlin doctors, who were so -openly devoted to his heir. - -In a state of public mind where hints of assassination grow familiar to -the ear, the mere charge of a lack of filial affection sounds very tame -indeed. - -That William deserved during this painful period the reproaches heaped -upon him by the whole English-speaking world is by no means clear. Such -fault as may be with fairness imputed to him, seems to have grown quite -naturally out of the circumstances. He was on the side of the German -physicians as against Mackenzie; but after all that has happened that -can scarcely be regarded as a crime. He could not but range himself with -those who resented the tone Dr. Mackenzie and his friends assumed toward -what they called “the Court circles of Berlin.” - -When he reached San Remo in November, it was to note the death -mark clearly stamped on his father’s face; yet he heard the English -_entourage_ still talking about the possibility of the disease not being -cancer. The German doctors had grievous stories to tell him about how -they had been crowded out and put under the heel of the foreigner. -Whether he would or not, he was made a party to the whole wretched -wrangle which henceforth vexed the atmosphere of the Villa Zirio. - -The outside world was subjecting this villa and its inhabitants to the -most tirelessly inquisitive scrutiny. Newspaper correspondents engirdled -San Remo with a cordon of espionage, through which filtered the gossip -of servants and the stray babbling of tradespeople. Dr. Mackenzie--now -become Sir Morell--confided his views of the case to journalists who -desired them. The German physicians furtively promulgated stories of -quite a different hue, through the medium of the German press. Thus it -came about that, while Germany as a whole disliked deeply the manner in -which Frederic’s case was managed, the English-speaking peoples espoused -the opposite view and condemned as cruel and unnatural the position -occupied by the Germans, with young William at their head. - -As the winter of 1887-8 went forward, it became apparent that the -Kaiser’s prolonged life had run its span. The question which would -die first, old William or middle-aged Frederic, hung in a fluttering -balance. Germany watched the uncertain development of this dual tragedy -with bated breath, and all Christendom bent its attention upon Germany -and her two dying Hohenzollerns. - -March came, with its black skies and drifting snow wreaths and bitter -winds blown a thousand miles across the Sclavonic sand plains, and laid -the aged Kaiser upon his deathbed. Prince William, having alternated -through the winter between Berlin and San Remo, was at the last in -attendance upon his grandfather. The dying old man spoke to him as if -he were the immediate heir. Upon him all the injunctions of state and -family policy which the departing monarch wished to utter were directly -laid. The story of those conferences will doubtless never be revealed -in its entirety. But it is known that, if any notion had up to that -time existed of keeping Frederic from the throne, it was now abandoned. -William was counselled to loving patience and submission during the -little reign which his father at best could have. Bismarck was pledged -to remain in office upon any and all terms short of peremptory dismissal -through this same brief period. - -It was to William, too, that that last exhortation to be “considerate” - with Russia was muttered by the dying man--that strange domestic legacy -of the Hohenzollerns which hints at the murder of Charles XII, recalls -the partition of Poland, the despair of Jena, and the triumph of -Waterloo, and has yet in store we know not what still stranger things. - -William I died on March 9, 1888. On the morning of the following day -Frederic and his wife and daughters left San Remo in a special train -and arrived at Berlin on the night of the 11th, having made the swiftest -long journey known in the records of continental railways. The new -Kaiser’s proclamation--“To my People”--bears the date of March 12th, but -it was really not issued until the next day. - -During that period of delay, the Schloss at Charlottenburg, which had -been hastily fitted up for the reception of the invalid, was the -scene of protracted conferences between Frederic, his son William, and -Bismarck. Hints are not lacking that these interviews had their stormy -and unpleasant side, for Frederic had up to this time fairly maintained -his general health, and could to a limited extent make use of his voice. -But all that is visible to us of this is the fact that some sort of -understanding was arrived at, by which Bismarck could remain in office -and accept responsibility for the acts of the reign. - -The story of those melancholy ninety-nine days need not detain us long. -Young William himself, though standing now in the strong light of public -scrutiny, on the steps of the throne, remained silent, and for the most -part motionless. The world gossiped busily about his heartless conduct -toward his mother, his callous behaviour in the presence of his father’s -terrible affliction, his sympathy with those who most fiercely abused -the good Sir Morell Mackenzie. As there had been tales of his unfilial -actions at San Remo, so now there were stories of his shameless haste -to snatch the reins of power from his father’s hands. So late as August, -1889, an anonymous writer alleged in “The New Review” that “the watchers -by the sick bed in Charlottenburg were always in dread when ‘Willie’ -visited his father lest he might brusquely demand the establishment of a -Regency.” - -Next to no proof of these assertions can be discovered in Berlin. If -there was talk of a Regency--as well there might be among those who knew -of the existence of Frederic’s offer to abdicate--it did not in any way -come before the public. I know of no one qualified to speak who says -that it ever came before even Frederic. - -That a feeling of bitterness existed between William and his parents -is not to be denied. All the events of the past year had contributed to -intensify this feeling and to put them wider and wider apart. Even if -the young man had been able to divest himself of the last emotion of -self-sensitiveness, there would still have remained the dislike for -the whole England-Mackenzie-San Remo episode which rankled in every -conservative German mind. But neither the blood nor the training of -princes helps them to put thoughts of self aside--and in William’s case -a long chain of circumstances bound him to a position which, though -we may find it extremely unpleasant to the eye, seemed to him a simple -matter of duty and of justice to himself and to Prussia. - -The world gladly preserves and cherishes an idealized picture of the -knightly Kaiser Frederic, facing certain death with intrepid calm, and -labouring devotedly to turn what fleeting days might be left him to -the advantage of liberalism in Germany. It is a beautiful and elevating -picture, and we are all of us the richer for its possession. - -But, in truth, Frederic practically accomplished but one reform during -his reign, and that came in the very last week of his life and was -bought at a heavy price. To the end he gave a surprisingly regular -attention to the tasks of a ruler. Both at Charlottenburg and, later, -at Potsdam, he forced himself, dying though he was, to daily devote two -hours or more to audiences with ministers and officials, and an even -greater space of time in his library to signing State papers and writing -up his diary. But this labour was almost wholly upon routine matters. - -Two incidents of the brief reign are remembered--the frustrated -attempt to marry one of the Prussian Princesses to a Battenberg and -the successful expulsion of Puttkamer from the Prussian Ministry of the -Interior. - -The Battenberg episode attracted much the greater share of public -attention at the time, not only from the element of romance inherent in -the subject, but because it seemed to be an obvious continuation of -the Anglo-German feud which had been flashing its lightnings about -Frederic’s devoted head for a twelvemonth. Of the four Battenberg -Princes--cousins of the Grand Duke of Hesse by a morganatic marriage, -and hence, according to Prussian notions, not “born” at all--one had -married a daughter, another a granddaughter of the Queen of England. -This seemed to the German aristocracy a most remarkable thing, and -excited a good deal of class feeling, but was not important so long as -these upstart _protégés_ of English eccentricity kept out of reach of -German snubs. - -A third Battenberg, Alexander, had made for himself a considerable name -as Prince of Bulgaria: in fact, had done so well that the Germans -felt like liking him in spite of his brothers. The way in which he had -completely thrashed the Servians, moreover, reflected credit upon the -training he had had in the German Army. In his sensational quarrel with -the Czar, too, German opinion leaned to his side, and altogether there -was a kindly feeling toward him. Perhaps if there had been no antecedent -quarrel about English interference, even his matrimonial adoption into -the Hohenzollern family might have been tolerated with good grace. - -As it was, the announcement at the end of March that he was to be -betrothed to the Princess Victoria, the second daughter of Frederic, -provoked on the instant a furious uproar. The Junker class all over -Germany protested indignantly. The “reptile” press promptly raised the -cry that this was more of the alien work of the English Empress, who had -been prompted by her English mother to put this fresh affront upon all -true Germans. Prince Bismarck himself hastened to Berlin and sternly -insisted upon the abandonment of the obnoxious idea. There was a fierce -struggle before a result was reached, with hot feminine words and tears -of rage on one side, with square-jawed, gruff-voiced obstinacy and much -plain talk on the other. At last Bismarck overbore opposition and had -his way. Prince William manifested almost effusive gratitude to -the Chancellor for having dispelled this nightmare of a Battenberg -brother-in-law. - -The solicitude about this project seems to have been largely maternal. -Sir Morell Mackenzie says of the popular excitement over the subject: -“I cannot say that it produced much effect on the Emperor.” As for the -Princess Victoria, she has now for some time been the wife of Prince -Adolph of Schaumburg-Lippe. - -Although it did not attract a tithe of the attention given the -Battenberg marriage sensation, the dismissal of Puttkamer was really -an important act, the effects of which were lasting in Germany. This -official had been Minister of the Interior since 1881--a thoroughgoing -Bismarckian administrator, whose use of the great machinery of his -office to coerce voters, intimidate opposition, and generally grease -the wheels of despotic government, had become the terror and despair of -Prussian Liberalism; To have thrown him out of office it was worth while -to reign only ninety-nine days. - -Ostensibly his retirement was a condition imposed by Frederic before he -would sign the Reichstag’s bill lengthening the Parliamentary term to -five years. The Radicals had hoped he would veto it, and the overthrow -of Puttkamer was offered as a solace to these wounded hopes. But in -reality Puttkamer had been doomed from the outset of the new reign. He -was conspicuous among those who spoke with contempt of Frederic, and in -his ministerial announcement of the old Kaiser’s death to the public, -insolently neglected to say a word about his successor. Questioned about -this later, he had the impertinence to say that he could not find out -what title the new Kaiser would choose to assume. - -Puttkamer’s resignation was gazetted on June 11th, and that very evening -Prince Bismarck gave a great dinner, at which the fallen Minister was -the guest of honour. In one sense the insult was wasted, for out at -Potsdam the invalid at whom it was levelled could no longer eat, and was -obviously close to death. Indirectly, however, the affront made a mark -upon the world’s memory. We shall hear of Puttkamer again. - -On the 1st day of June Frederic had been conveyed by boat to Potsdam, -where he wished to spend his remaining weeks in the most familiar of -his former homes, the New Palace, the name of which he changed to -Friedrichskron. He was already a dying man. Two clever observers, who -were on the little pier at Gleinicke, described to me the appearance of -the Emperor when he was carried up out of the cabin to land. Said one: -“He was crouched down, wretched, scared, and pallid, like a man going -to execution.” The other added: “Say rather like an enfeebled maniac in -charge of his keepers.” - -Yet, broken and crushed as he was, he was Kaiser to the last. The -announcement of Putt-kamer’s downfall came on June 11th. Frederic died -on June 15th. - -It was in the late forenoon of that rainy, gray summer day that the -black and white royal standard above the palace fell--signifying that -the eighth King of Prussia was no more. A moment later orderlies were -running hither and thither outside; the troops within the palace park -hastily threw themselves into line, and detachments were at once marched -to each of the gates to draw a cordon between Friedrichskron and all the -world besides. - -In an inner room in the great palace the elder son of the dead Kaiser, -all at once become William II, German Emperor, King in Prussia, eighteen -times a Duke, twice a Grand Duke, ten times a Count, fifteen times a -Seigneur, and three times a Margrave--this young man, with fifty-four -titles thus suddenly plumped down upon him, * seated himself to write -proclamations to his Army and his Navy. - - * With the possible exception of the Emperor of Austria, - William is the most betitled man in Europe. Beside being - German Emperor and King of Prussia, he is Margrave of - Brandenburg, and the two Lausitzes; Grand Duke of Lower - Rhineland and Posen; Duke of Silesia, Glatz, Saxony, - Westphalia, Engern, Pomerania, Luneburg, Holstein-Schleswig, - Magdeburg, Bremen, Geldern, Cleve, Juliers and Berg, - Crossen, Lauenburg, Mecklenburg, of the Wends and of the - Cassubes; Landgrave of Hesse and Thuringia; Prince of - Orange; Count-Prince of Henneburg; Count of the Mark, of - Ravensberg, of Hohenstein, of Lingen and Tecklenburg, of - Mansfeld, Sigmaringen, Veringen, and of Hohenzollern; - Burgrave of Nuremberg; Seigneur of Frankfurt, Rügen, East - Friesland, Paderborn, Pyrmont, Halber-stadt, Münster, - Minden, Osnabrück, Hildesheim, Verden, Kammin, Fulda, Nassau - and Moers. - - - - -CHAPTER VI.--UNDER THE SWAY OF THE BISMARCKS - -During the three days between the death and burial of Frederic -the world saw and heard nothing of his successor save these two -proclamations to the Army and Navy. This in itself was sufficiently -strange. It was like a slap in the face of nineteenth-century -civilization that this young man, upon whom the vast task of ruling an -empire rich in historical memories of peaceful progress had devolved, -should take such a barbaric view of his position. In this country -which gave birth to the art of printing, this Germany wherein Dürer -and Cranach worked and Luther changed the moral history of mankind and -Lessing cleared the way for that noble band of poets of whom Goethe -stands first and Wagner is not last, it seemed nothing less than -monstrous that a youth called to be Emperor should see only columns of -troops and iron-clads. - -The purport of these proclamations, shot forth from the printing press -while the news of Frederic’s death was still in the air, fitted well the -precipitancy of their appearance. William delivered a long eulogy upon -his grandfather, made only a passing allusion to his father, recited the -warlike achievements and character of his remoter ancestors, and closed -by saying: “Thus we belong to each other, I and the army; thus we were -born for one another; and firmly and inseparably will we hold together, -whether it is God’s will to give us peace or storm.” - -Exultant militarism rang out from every line of these utterances. The -world listened to this young man boasting about being a war lord, with -feelings nicely graded upon a scale of distances. Those near by put -hands on sword hilts; those further away laughed contemptuously; but all -alike, far and near, felt that an evil day for Germany had dawned. - -The funeral of old William at Berlin in March had been a spectacle -memorable in the history of mankind--the climacteric demonstration of -the pomp and circumstance of European monarchical systems. A simple -military funeral, a trifle more ornate than that of a General of -division, was given to his successor. The day, June 18th, was the -anniversary of Waterloo. - -It may have been due to thoughts upon what this day meant in Prussian -history; more probably it reflected the chastened and softening -influences of these three days’ meditation in the palace of death; from -whatever cause, William’s address to the Prussian people, issued on the -18th, was a much more satisfactory performance. The tone of the drill -sergeant was entirely lacking, and the words about his father, the -departed Frederic, were full of filial sweetness. The closing paragraph -fairly mirrors the whole proclamation: - -“I have vowed to God that, after the example of my fathers, I will be a -just and clement Prince to my people, that I will foster piety and the -fear of God, and that I will protect the peace, promote the welfare of -the country, be a helper of the poor and distressed, and a true guardian -of the right.” Pondering upon the marked difference between this address -and the excited and vain-glorious harangue to the fighting men of -Germany which heralded William’s accession, it occurred to me to inquire -whether or not Dr. Hinzpeter had in the interim made his appearance at -Potsdam. No one could remember, but the point may be worth the attention -of the future historian. - -Studying all that has since happened in the variant lights of these -proclamations of June 15th and June 18th, one sees a constant struggle -between two Williams--between the gentle, dreamy-eyed, soft-faced boy of -Cassel, and the vain, arrogant youth who learned to clank a sword at his -heels and twist a baby moustache in Bonn. Such conflicts and clashings -between two hostile inner selves have a part in the personal history -of each of us. Only we are not out under the searching glare of -illumination which beats upon a prince, and the records and results of -these internal warrings are of interest to ourselves alone. - -William, moreover, has one of those nervous, delicately-poised, -highly-sensitized temperaments which responds readily and without -reserve to the emotion of the moment. Increasing years seem to be -strengthening his judgment, but they do not advance him out of the -impressionable age. In the romantic idealism and mysticism of his mind, -and in the histrionic bent of his impulses, he is a true son of his -father, a genuine heir of the strange fantastic Ascanien strain, which -meant greatness in Catharine II, madness in her son Paul, and whimsical -staginess in his grand-daughter Augusta. - -Like his father, too, his nature is peculiarly susceptible to the -domination of a stronger and more deeply rooted personality. The wide -difference between them arises from this very similitude. Frederic spent -all his adult life under the influence of the broad-minded, cultured, -and high-thinking English Princess, his wife. William, during these -years now under notice, was in the grip of the Bismarcks. - -The ascendency of this family, which attained its zenith in these first -months of the young Kaiser’s reign, is a unique thing in the history of -Prussia. The Hohenzollerns have been hereditarily a stiff-backed race, -much addicted to personal government, and not at all given to leaning -on other people. From 1660 to 1860 you will search their records in -vain for the name of a minister who was allowed to usurp functions not -strictly his own. The first Frederic William was a good deal pulled -about and managed by inferiors, it is true, but they did it only by -making themselves seem more his inferiors than any others about him. No -Wolsey or Richelieu or Metternich could thrive in the keen air of the -Mark of Brandenburg, under the old kingly traditions of Prussia. - -Bismarck rose upon the ruins of those traditions. In 1862 the Prussian -Diet and Prussian society generally were in open revolt against the new -king, William I. Constitutionalism and the spread of modern ideas had -made the old absolutist system of the Hohenzollerns impossible; budgets -were thrown out, constituencies were abetted in their mutiny by the -nobles, and the newspaper press was fiercely hostile. The King, a frank, -kindly, slow-minded old soldier, did not know what to do. The thought of -surrendering his historic prerogatives under pressure, and the resource -of sweeping Berlin’s streets with grape-shot, were equally hateful to -him. In his perplexity he summoned his Ambassador at Paris to Berlin, -and begged him to undertake the defence of the monarchy against its -enemies. He made this statesman, Otto von Bismarck, Minister of the -King’s House and of Foreign Affairs, and avowedly a Premier who had -undertaken to rule Prussia without a Parliament. - -It was the old story of the Saxons, being invited to defend the British -homestead, and remaining to enjoy it themselves. - -The lapse of a quarter of a century found this King magnified into an -Emperor, enjoying the peaceful semblance of a reign over 48,000,000 of -people, where before he had stormily failed to govern much less than -half that number. He had grown into the foremost place among European -sovereigns so easily and without friction, and was withal so honest and -amiable an old gentleman, that it did not disturb him to note how much -greater a man than himself his Minister had come to be. - -The relations between William I and Bismarck were always frank, loyal, -and extremely simple. They were fond of each other, mutually grateful -for what each had helped the other to do and to be. It illumines one of -the finest traits in the great Chancellor’s character to realize that, -during the last eighteen years of the old Kaiser’s life. - -Bismarck would never go to the opera or theatre for fear the popular -reception given to him might wound the royal sensitiveness of his -master. - -Bismarck, having all power in his own hands, became possessed of that -most human of passions, the desire to found a dynasty, and hand this -authority down to his posterity. There was a certain amount of -promising material in his older son Herbert--a robust, rough-natured, -fairly-acute, and altogether industrious man--ten years older than the -Prince William, now become Kaiser. The strength of Prince Bismarck’s -hold upon the old William was only matched by the supremacy he had thus -far managed to exert over the imperial grandson. He dreamed a vision of -having Herbert as omnipotent in the Germany of the twentieth century as -he had been in the last half of the nineteenth. - -The story of his terrible disillusion belongs to a later stage. At -the time with which we are dealing, and indeed for nearly a year after -William’s accession in June of 1888, the ascendency of the Bismarcks was -complete. Men with fewer infirmities of temper and feminine capacities -for personal grudges and jealousies might possibly have maintained -that ascendency, or the semblance of it, for years. But a long lease of -absolute power had developed the petty sides of their characters. During -the brief reign of Frederic they had had to suffer certain slights and -rebuffs at the hands of his Liberal friends who were temporarily brought -to the front. To their swollen _amour propre_ nothing else seemed -so important now as to avenge these indignities. The new Kaiser they -thought of as wholly their man, and they proceeded to use him as a rod -for the backs of their enemies. - -It remains a surprising thing that they were allowed to go so far in -this evil direction before William revolted and called a halt. For what -they did before a stop was put to their career it is impossible not to -blame him as well as them. In truth, he began by being so wholly under -their influence that even his own individual acts were coloured by their -prejudices and hates. - -If he had been momentarily softened by the pathetic conditions -surrounding his father’s funeral, his heart steeled itself again soon -enough under the sway of the Bismarcks. He entered with gratuitous zest -upon a course of demonstrative disrespect to his father’s memory. - -Frederic had been born in the spacious, rambling New Palace at Potsdam, -and in adult life had made it his principal home. Here all his children -save William were born, and here William himself spent his boyhood, as -Mr. Bigelow has so pleasantly told us, * playing with his brother Henry -in their attic nursery, or cruising in their little toy frigate on the -neighbouring lakes. Here Frederic at the end came home to die, and in -the last fortnight of his life formally decreed that the name of the New -Palace should henceforth be Friedrichskron--or Frederic’s Crown. - - * New Review, August, 1889. - -All who have seen the splendid edifice, embowered in the ancient royal -forest parks, will recognize the poetic and historic fitness of the -name. From its centre rises a dome, surmounted by three female figures -supporting an enormous kingly crown. There was a time when Europe talked -as much about this emblematic dome as we did a year or so ago about the -Eiffel Tower, though for widely different reasons. It was not remarkable -from any scientific point of view, but it embodied in visible bronze -a colossal insult levelled by Frederic the Great at the three most -powerful women in the world. When that tireless creature emerged from -the Seven Years’ War, he began busying himself by the construction of -this palace. Everybody had supposed him to be ruined financially, but he -had his father’s secret hoards almost intact, and during the six years -1763-9 drew from them over £2,000,000 to complete this structure. -With characteristic insolence he reared upon the dome, in the act of -upholding his crown, three naked figures having the faces of Catherine -of Russia, Maria Theresa of Austria, and Mme. Pompadour of France, -each with her back turned toward her respective country. The irony was -coarse, but perhaps it may be forgiven to a man who had so notably come -through the prolonged life-and-death struggle forced upon him by these -women. - -At all events, it was an intelligent and proper thing to give the palace -the name of Friedrichskron, and one would think that, even if the -change had been less fitting than it was, the wish of the dying man -about the house of his birth could not but command respect. - -One of William’s first acts was to order the discontinuance of the new -name, and in his proclamation he ostentatiously reverted to the former -usage of “New Palace.” - -To glance ahead for a moment, there came in September an even more -painful illustration of the unfilial attitude to which William had -hardened himself. The _Deutsche Rundschau_ created a sudden sensation by -printing the diary of Frederic, from July 11, 1870, to March 12th of -the following year, covering the entire French campaign and all -the negotiations leading up to the formation of the German Empire. -Quotations have already been made in these pages showing that this diary -demonstrated authoritatively the fallacy of Bismarck’s claim to be the -originator of the Empire. Frederic and the others had had, in fact, to -drag him into a reluctant acceptance of the imperial idea. The shock -of now all at once learning this was felt all over Germany. Every mind -comprehended that the blow had been aimed straight at the Chancellor’s -head. Nobody seemed to see, least of all Bismarck, that the diary really -gave the Chancellor a higher title than that of inventor of the Empire, -and revealed him as a wise, far-seeing statesman, who would not submit -to the fascination of the imperial scheme until he made sure that its -realization would be of genuine benefit to all Germany. So far, indeed, -was he from recognizing this that he allowed the publication to rob him -of all control over his temper. - -The edition of the _Rundschau_ was at once confiscated, and on September -23rd Bismarck sent a “report” to the Emperor upon the diary. He set up -the pretence of doubting its genuineness as a cloak for saying the most -brutal things about its dead author. The charge was openly made that -Frederic could not be trusted with any State secrets owing to the fear -of “indiscreet revelations to the English Court,” and therefore “stood -without the sphere of all business negotiations.” Further, he asserted -that the portions of the diary expressing willingness to force the -Southern States into the Empire must be forgeries, because “such ideas -are equally contemptible from the standpoint of honourable feeling and -that of policy.” In conclusion he pointed out that, even if the diary -were genuine, Frederic in giving it for publication would be a traitor -under Article XCII of the Penal Code. - -Of the genuineness of the diary there was, of course, no question -whatever in anybody’s mind, least of all in Bismarck’s or William’s. Yet -the young Kaiser permitted this gross attack by the Chancellor upon his -father’s honour and patriotism to be officially published, and gave his -consent to a prosecution of those responsible for the appearance of the -diary in the _Rundschau_. - -The story of the prosecution is a familiar one. Dr. Geffcken was found -to be the friend to whom Frederic had entrusted this portion of his -diary, and he was arrested and thrown into prison, to be brought before -the imperial tribunal at Leipsic. The ingrate Friedberg put his talents -at the disposal of the Bismarcks to draw up the case against him. -The houses of Geffcken and Baron von Roggenbach were ransacked, and a -correspondence covering many years was seized and searched by Bismarck’s -emissaries. These letters were said to contain many compromising -references to the Crown Princess, Princess Alice, Sir Robert Morier, -and others whom Bismarck alleged to be in a conspiracy against him. This -charge of being desirous of the Chancellor’s downfall grew indeed to be -the principal item in the attack upon Geffcken. - -The indictment for high treason was at last, on January 2, 1889, brought -before the Judges of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Leipsic, and -they threw it out with ignominious swiftness. Geffcken himself, badly -broken in health and mind, was released on the 4th. This was Bismarck’s -first public mishap under the new reign, and it attracted much surprised -attention at the time, as showing both the Chancellor’s lack of -intelligent self-restraint in getting into a fury over a revelation which -really redounded to his credit, and his ignorance of German law. The -opening month of the year 1889, in which this happened, was invested -with importance in another way, as we shall see in due course. - -But for the time, returning now to the middle of 1888, William seemed -to delight in exhibiting himself to the public eye as the man of the -Bismarcks. One of his earliest acts was to make a special journey to -Friedrichsruh to visit the Chancellor, and the most popular photograph -of the year was that representing him standing on the lawn in front of -this château, in company with Bismarck and the famous “Reichshund.” In -Berlin, too, people noted his custom of paying early morning calls at -the house of Herbert Bismarck, and wondered how long this enthusiastic -self-abasement would last. - -While it did last, this influence of the Bismarcks was so powerful and -all-pervasive that it is very difficult to follow the thread of the -young Kaiser’s own personality through the busy period of his first -half-year’s reign. One continually confronts this embarrassment of -inability to separate what he himself wanted to do from what was -suggested by these powers behind the throne. We know now that the Kaiser -possesses a strongly-marked individuality and an unusually active and -fertile mind. Doubtless these asserted themselves a great deal at -even this early stage, but there is little or nothing to guide us in -distinguishing their effects. - -The truth seems to be that at this time, in these opening months of his -reign, William’s inclinations ran so wholly in Bismarckian channels that -even what he himself initiated was in practice a part of the Bismarcks’ -work. - -This is especially true of the young Kaiser’s first important step in -the field of international politics. He had been on the throne for less -than four weeks when he started off to pay a State visit to the Czar of -Russia. He had not been invited, and it was apparent enough in Russian -Court circles that his hasty and impulsive descent upon their summer -leisure was as unwelcome as it was surprising. He himself appears to -have been swayed both by memories of his grandfather’s injunction -to friendliness toward Russia, and by Bismarck’s desire to make a -demonstration of unfriendliness to England. - -This note of anti-English prejudice is dominant throughout all that -immediately followed. During Frederic’s brief tenure of power, in April -of 1888, Queen Victoria had made a journey to Berlin, and had spent -several days in the company of her dying son-in-law and afflicted -daughter at the palace of Charlottenburg. Her coming was not at all -grateful to the Junker class, and it was rendered highly unpopular among -Berliners generally by a curiously tactless performance on the part -of the Empress Frederic. To properly receive her royal mother it -was necessary to refurnish and decorate a suite of rooms in the -Charlottenburg Schloss, and orders were sent to London for all this new -furniture, and for English workmen to make the needed alterations. As -may be imagined, this slight upon the tradesmen and artizans of Berlin -was deeply resented, and there was considerable ground for nervousness -lest the Queen should have some manifestation of this dislike thrust -upon her notice during her stay. Fortunately, this did not happen, but -Prince William behaved so coldly toward his grandmother that her Majesty -could have had no doubt as to the attitude of his friends. - -Later on, after Frederic’s death? came confused stories about the -arbitrary and unjust way in which his widow had been treated, both -personally and as regarded her property rights. These matters are all -settled now, and were the subject of great exaggeration even then, but -they created so much bad blood at the time that the Prince of Wales in -the following autumn left Vienna upon a hastily improvised and wholly -fictitious hunting tour, rather than remain and meet his nephew, Kaiser -William, who was coming that way. - -Nothing very notable occurred during the July journeys to Russia, -Sweden, and Denmark, and the autumnal trip to Austria and Italy -presented no incidents of importance save this sudden flight of the -indignant Prince of Wales, and a distinctly unpleasant bungling of the -visit to the Pope. This latter episode has become famous in the annals -of Prussian brusqueness and incivility. The young Kaiser in his white -cuirassier uniform and eagle-capped helmet bluntly told the venerable -Pontiff that his dreams of regaining temporal power were all childish -nonsense, and the still ruder Herbert Bismarck broke up the interview -by forcing his way into the Pope’s private apartments, dragging amiable -young Prince Henry with him as a pretext for his boisterous insolence. -This was thought to be a smart trick at the time, and Herbert and the -German Ambassador openly chuckled over it. - -William himself is said to have remarked to King Humbert after his -return from the call upon Leo XIII: “I have destroyed his illusions.” At -least the Holy Father no longer indulged illusions as to what the German -Emperor was like--but in his mild, tranquil manner confided to certain -members of his intimate household the pious fear that William was a -conceited and headstrong young man, whose reign would end in disaster. - -These journeys did little more than confirm the world in sharing the -Pope’s unfavourable opinion of William. Both by his ostentatious visit -to Russia before even his two allies of the triple compact had been -greeted, and by his marked avoidance of England while visiting all the -other maritime nations of the north, he was credited with desiring to -offend the country of his mother’s birth. That country returned his -dislike with interest. - -Finally, on the 1st day of January, 1889, he put the capstone upon this -evil and unfilial reputation which he had been for a year building up in -the minds of English-speaking people. Badly as the outside world thought -of him by this time, it learned now with amazement that he had selected -for special New Year’s honours the ex-Minister Puttkamer. The one -important act of Frederic’s reign had been the dismissal of this man, to -whom William now, with marks of peculiar distinction, gave the order of -the Black Eagle. - -A groan of despairing disgust rose from every part of the globe where -people were watching German affairs. How could any good thing whatsoever -be expected from such a son? - - - - -CHAPTER VII.--THE BEGINNINGS OF A BENEFICENT CHANGE - -The opening month of 1889 was a momentous period in the history of the -young Emperor. The decoration of Puttkamer, who stood in all eyes as -a type of the late Kaiser’s bitterest and most malignant foes, put the -finishing touch to the demonstrative unfilial stage of William’s career. -Men had been brought by this deed to think as badly of him as they -could--when lo! the whole situation suddenly changed. This crowning -act of affront to his father’s memory was also the last. From that very -month it is a new William who presents himself for consideration. - -It is not possible to put the finger upon any one special cause for the -change in the Kaiser’s views and feelings which from this time began to -manifest itself. There were in truth many reasons working together to -effect this alteration, at once so subtle and so swift. - -In its essence the abrupt new departure was due to the awakened -consciousness in William’s mind that the Bismarcks had been making a -fool of him. Royalty can bear any calamity better than this. The -saying ascribed to Louis XVIII, “For the love of God, do not render me -ridiculous!” puts into words the thought that has lain closest to every -monarch’s heart since kings have had a being. And it was in William’s -nature to regard himself and his position with exceptional seriousness. - -It would be extremely interesting to follow the mental processes by -which William all at once reached this realizing sense of his position, -and saw how poor and contemptible a figure he had been made to cut in -the eyes of the civilized world. As it is, we can only glance briefly at -the more obvious of the causes which led to this welcome awakening. - -First of all, the High Court of Leipsic, on January 4th, threw out the -indictment which Bismarck had been so savagely pressing against Dr. -Geffcken, for the treasonable publication of a part of the Emperor -Frederic’s diary. The official ransacking of all his correspondence, -and that of his most intimate associates, had revealed nothing save -additional proof that the late Princess Alice of Hesse, Sir Robert -Morier, and Dr. Geffcken were close friends of Frederic and his -wife--which, of course, everybody knew before, but which the Bismarckian -journals had paraded afresh as a reason for new insults to the dead -Kaiser’s memory and to the widowed Empress Frederic. The prompt adverse -decision of the court dealt a sharp blow to this scandalous abuse of -power. - -In addition, the Bismarcks were meanwhile conducting a fierce public -campaign against Sir Robert Morier, the British Ambassador at St. -Petersburg--or rather, through him, against the honour of the late -Emperor. Their accusation, based upon some alleged verbal statement of -Marshal Bazaine, made at a time when he was most hopelessly discredited -and new in exile, was that Frederic had systematically revealed the -secrets of the German Army plans to Morier, who had sent them to England -to be wired across to France. When Sir Robert Morier produced Bazaine’s -written denial of the alleged utterances and sent it to Herbert -Bismarck, with a polite request for a withdrawal of the odious charge, -he received a letter of refusal, couched in grossly insulting terms. -This controversy, culminating about the time of the collapse of the -Geffcken prosecution, no doubt contributed much to the opening of -William’s eyes. - -There were not wanting at Berlin clever people ready to take advantage -of these foolish excesses of the arrogant and over-confident Bismarcks. -Their arbitrary and despotic courses had offended many besides those who -would naturally be opposed to them politically, and there now sprang -up, as out of the earth, a singular combination of the most diverse -political elements, united only in their hatred for the Bismarcks. In -this incongruous alliance Radicals and Jew-baiters joined hands, and -ultra-Conservatives stood side by side with the Empress Frederic’s -Liberal faction. The headquarters of this odd combination were at the -residence of Alfred Count von Waldersee. - -This powerful personage, who for years, as Quartermaster-General, was in -training as Moltke’s visible heir, and was until recently at the head -of the greatest fighting machine the human race ever saw, is still but -little known to the general public. This is because press popularity and -interesting personal qualities and connections have nothing whatever -to do with a man’s promotion in the German Army. Heroic actions on the -field advance him no more than does the advertising faculty in times -of peace. He rises to each place because he is judged to be fittest -for that particular post, and this judgment sternly sets aside all -considerations not immediately concerned with the duties of that post. - -Thus it happens that of Count von Waldersee, who is one of the most -important military officers in the world, not much is known save that he -is now grey and bald, and has for his wife a very astute and influential -American lady. - -Twenty-seven years ago an elderly prince of the Schleswig-Holstein -family produced a temporary sensation by renouncing his ancestral rank, -in order to marry a beautiful young Miss Lee, whom he had met at Paris. -He was then just the age of the century--sixty-four--and the bride, -who, with true American courage, states the year of her birth in -the _Almanach de Gotha_, was twenty-six. Less than a year later the -bridegroom, who had been given the title of Prince de Noër at the -Austrian Court, died in Syria. Nine years afterwards--in 1874--his widow -married Count Waldersee, and went to Berlin to live. - -It happened, in 1881, that young Prince William of Prussia was wedded -to a Schleswig-Holstein Princess, to whom the Countess Waldersee, by her -first marriage, stood in the relation of great-aunt. Young William and -Waldersee were already friends. This connection between their wives -led to a closer intimacy, the results of which have been tremendous in -Germany. - -I have said that the home of the Waldersees now became the centre of the -rising opposition to the Bismarcks. Count Waldersee himself represented -the ancient Prussian nobles’ traditions of an absolute monarchy and a -Hohenzollern’s unlimited kingly power--traditions which were all at war -with this Bismarckian usurpation of authority. The Countess Waldersee, -with the privilege of an American, was able to gather into association -with this aristocratic conservatism many elements in German -political life which, under any other roof than hers, would have been -antagonistic. Here it was that the women’s conclave was formed--the -young Empress Victoria and her widowed mother-in-law, the Empress -Frederic, joining hands with the Countess Waldersee--with the blessing -of the aged Empress Augusta, who all her life long had hated Bismarck, -resting upon their work. - -Bismarck had been supreme for so many years, and had put so many of -these feminine cabals under his feet in bygone days, that he failed to -recognize the deadly peril which confronted him in this newly-unmasked -battery. He proceeded to charge upon it with all his old recklessness -of confidence, and with his accustomed weapons of newspaper insults, -personal browbeatings and threats to resign. To his great bewilderment -nothing gave way. He had come at last upon a force greater than himself. -He maintained the struggle for over a year--scornfully at first, and -later with a despairing tenacity as pitiful as it was undignified, until -at last he was fairly cudgeled off the field. - -This was the trick of it: Bismarck, in all his extended series of -conquests over previous attacks by the women of the Court, had had the -King at his back. He was supported by old William in his long campaign -against the old Empress and the English Crown Princess. He had had the -sanction of young William in his warfare upon the Empress Frederic. It -had been with royal consent that he bore himself like the foremost man -in Prussia, and he had allowed himself to forget the importance of -this fact. The tables were completely turned upon him the instant these -adroit and sagacious women whispered in young William’s ear, “Why not be -foremost man in Prussia yourself?” - -The young Kaiser’s thirtieth birthday came on January 27, 1889. We can -put down to about that date his advance to an independent position in -front of everybody else in his kingdom--including the Bismarcks. No -single striking event marked the change; but the feeling that the change -had come spread with strange swiftness throughout the length and breadth -of Germany. The half-intuitive sense that Bismarck was done for ran like -wildfire over the country. The Iron Chancellor for thirty years had -done his best to reduce German manhood to the serf-like condition of the -courtier, and it is proverbial that there is no other keenness of scent -like that of courtiers for the fall of a favourite. - -The open reconciliation between William and his mother belongs to a -somewhat later period, but the spirit of it was already in the air. The -terrible news of the death of Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria, which -came on January 30th, is also to be taken into account as bearing upon -this change at Berlin. The Austrian heir-apparent was only six months -older than William, and of late years they had not been friends. Rudolph -had been peculiarly intimate with the Prince of Wales and with the late -Emperor Frederic, and had not concealed his sympathy with the English -view of William’s behaviour. His tragic ending now produced the most -painful and softening effect upon the emotional young Kaiser. He could -only be restrained from going _incognito_ to the funeral at Vienna by -the urgent pleas of the stricken Austrian Emperor, and he made obviously -sincere expressions of grief to the friends of the Prince of Wales, -which went far toward removing the ill-feelings between them. - -As it became apparent that the young Kaiser had thrown off his -Bismarckian leading-strings, and, after a miserable interlude of small -personal persecutions and revenges, was at last coming to comprehend the -vastness of his duties and responsibilities, the world began watching -him with an interest of another sort. - -It was not easy for outsiders to follow with much clearness the details -of the fight which Bismarck was now making to retain his position and -prestige. No one but a German politician could understand the excitement -about the appointment of the National Liberal, von Bennigsen, to the -Governorship of Hanover--an act, by the way, which definitely ranged -the ultra-Tories against Bismarck--or apprehend the significance of -Bismarck’s fruitless attempts to secure the dismissal of Court Chaplain -Stocker, who was too much a partisan of Waldersee’s. The general -public preferred rather to study the personality of the young Kaiser as -revealed by his individual acts and utterances. - -William’s fondness for travelling had from the first attracted -attention. It is not generally known that in order to gratify this taste -he at the beginning of his reign decided to devote to it the money -which would be saved by foregoing a coronation ceremony. This decision -accorded with historic Prussian precedents. From the year 1701, when -Prussia was raised to royal estate, and the first King was crowned with -such memorable and costly pomp at Königsberg, no Hohenzollern had a -coronation ceremony until William I put the crown upon his own head in -October of 1861. Each of the intervening monarchs held instead what -is called a _Hudligung_, or solemn homage from the assembled -representatives of the estates of the realm--a curious ceremonial relic -from feudal times which survived into the present century in its antique -form as a public function in the Schloss Platz. William I’s avowed -reason for breaking over the rule was that during his predecessor’s -reign a Constitution had been promulgated in Prussia, and that this -new-fangled innovation rendered it necessary to remind people anew of -the powers and prerogatives of the monarch by visible signs of crown and -sceptre. - -Young William was so enthusiastic a follower of his grandfather that -people assumed he would imitate him in this, all the more because his -own tastes are toward display. Upon this theory there has been a great -deal printed about a forthcoming coronation which never comes. Only -last year an unusually impressive statement appeared to the effect that -William, moved by meditating upon the historic splendours of the old -Holy Roman Empire, intended to have himself crowned German Emperor -in the famous mediaeval church of the ancient imperial city of -Frankfort-on-the-Main. The idea is a beautiful one, but there is no fact -at the back of it. According to William’s present intention, he will not -be crowned at all. - -In the restless course of his travels during these first six months -William had made numerous speeches, almost every one of which contained -a sentence or two of enough significance to be reprinted everywhere. -As a rule his utterances at foreign Courts were polite and amiable to -a fault, while his speeches at home, made among cheering after-dinner -audiences in various parts of Germany, were characterized by much -violent extravagance of language. The most intemperate of these -harangues were reserved for his State visits to the provincial divisions -of Prussia. At the beginning of last year, on the occasion of a visit -of this nature to Königsberg, capital of East Prussia, he was led by -his enthusiasm into so fervid a strain of eloquence, and flourished -the metaphorical sword so recklessly, that one of the Russian papers -ironically congratulated the world upon the fact that Prussia only had -thirteen provinces, and that the Kaiser had now exhausted the rhetorical -possibilities of eleven of them. - -The earliest and most interesting of these speeches was delivered at -Frankfurt-am-Oder just two months after his accession. He referred of -his own volition to the undoubtedly foolish talk that had been heard -during his father’s brief reign, of Frederic’s alleged idea of giving -back Alsace-Lorraine, an imputation which William characterized as -shameful to his father’s memory. - -“There is upon this point but one mind,” he went on amid loud hurrahs, -“namely, that our eighteen army corps, and our 42,000,000 people should -be left upon the field rather than that we should permit a solitary -stone of what we have gained to be taken from us.” - -Equally characteristic, and perhaps even more important as a clue to the -manner in which the young Kaiser’s conceptions of his position shaped -themselves, was his celebrated rebuke to the Burgomaster and municipal -authorities of Berlin, which has for its date, October 28 1888. That we -may the better comprehend this, it will be well to glance for a moment -at the remarkable development of the new Berlin. - -Twenty years ago--that is to say, when the Empire was founded--Berlin -was of course much the largest city within the new German boundaries, -but it was scarcely a capital in the sense that Paris, Vienna, or London -is. Frankfurt-am-Main was the great banking centre of Germany; Hamburg -was its commercial metropolis; Dresden, Hanover, Stuttgart, Wiesbaden, -and even smaller towns were more esteemed as places of fashionable -residence and resort. Berlin was big and powerful, and rich in -manufactures, no doubt, but nobody thought of it as beautiful or -attractive, and nobody wanted to live there who could maintain himself -in pleasanter surroundings. - -The change which has been wrought in all this since 1870 is only to be -matched by the phenomenal growth of great cities in the American West. -Europe has seen nothing like it before. Within these twenty years Berlin -has grown like a veritable Chicago. And not only has it attracted to -itself hundreds of thousands of new citizens, and spread itself out on -the Brandenburg plain over new square miles of stately brick and mortar -and asphalt, but it has sapped the pre-eminence of its more ancient -rivals, each in its speciality. Berlin has so absorbed the monetary -power of the Empire that Frankfort is now scarcely thought of as -a banking centre at all, and even Amsterdam and Paris are dwarfed -financially. In similar fashion, the German nobility and wealthy -classes, instead of scattering their town homes among a dozen local -centres of social life, swarm now all to Berlin, and bid so strenuously -for available building sites that prices for land and houses and floor -rents are higher there than anywhere else in Europe. - -Obviously, it is the establishment of the imperial Court in Berlin which -has done this, and both the strength and weakness of the imperial system -are reflected in greatest perfection of form and colour in the social -conditions of this mighty new metropolis. - -The enormous concentration here of rich or pretentious young nobles -in the various regiments of the Guard Corps; of the ablest and most -influential soldiers of Germany in the General Staff and the central -military offices; of the cleverest politicians and administrators in -the various civic departments, and of the great aristocratic and monied -classes who must live where the Court is settled and the Reichstag -meets and the finance of Europe is controlled--all this makes Berlin -a peculiarly responsive mirror of the ideas and methods of German -government. - -In turn Berlin has imposed its character with increasing force upon -the whole German people. The dear old indolent, amiable, incapable, -happy-go-lucky, waltz-loving Vienna used to be the type of what people -had in mind when they spoke of the sentimental German. Berlin has made -Vienna seem now as remote and non-German almost as Pesth itself, and -instead has impressed its own strongly-marked individuality upon the new -Empire--energetic, exact, harsh under slight provocation, methodical -as the multiplication table, coldly just to law-abiding people, and a -fire-and-steel terror to everybody else. - -As might be naturally expected in this bustle of busy officials, of -bankers and merchants burdened with a novel wealth, of the ceaseless -rattle of bayonets and clatter of swords and spurs, art and literature -are pretty well pushed to the wall. The vast new growth of Berlin and -the rush toward it of German wealth, rank, and fashion, have drawn in -their train a certain current of painters and writers, but nothing -at all in proportion with the expansion in other lines of activity. -Berlin’s new supremacy has not affected Leipsic as the book centre of -German-speaking people, or Munich and Düsseldorf as homes of art study. - -These changes may come, too, in time, particularly if the young Emperor -exerts himself to achieve such an end. Up to the present, he has been -too busy even to think of such a thing. The exactions of his daily -routine of labour are so great that he simply has no time for the softer -and more intellectual side of life, even if the taste were there. He has -found leisure to sit for several portraits since his accession, but that -seems to have been the sum of his attention to art. As for literature, -an observant official in Berlin assured me of his conviction that -William had not had the time to read a single book since his accession. - -Whatever may come in the future, it is undeniable that the author -now cuts a poor figure in Berlin. The city’s drift is toward material -things--toward business, official rank, and martial perfection. Even the -most prosperous and popular writers of books in Berlin strive to -obtain some small post in the civil service in order to command social -position. Among many instances of this brought to my notice one will -serve as an illustration. Ernst von Wilderbruch is the most successful -of contemporary Berlin playwrights, but on his card you will read that -he is a Counsellor of Legation at the Foreign Office. This office yields -him a salary equal to a twentieth part of his income from his plays, -but it is of the greatest importance to him because it insures his rank. -Here in England Edmund Gosse has an official place--just as in Boston -Robert Grant holds a post in the municipal service. But can you fancy -either of these gentlemen putting the fact on his card, or preferring to -be known as an official rather than as a writer? - -Even the splendid University of Berlin exerts a liberalizing influence -rather through the public political attitude of its professors than -by the diffusion of literary tastes among the community. This fact, -together with the recollections which associate the late Emperor -Frederic with bookish people, and the irritated consciousness that -a very large proportion of Germany’s present authors are Jews and -Radicals, gives the contemptuous attitude of Berlin’s aristocratic and -military classes toward literature a decided political twist. - -This is rendered the more marked by the overwhelming Radicalism of the -city’s electorate. The immense balloon-like rise of the value of land, -and the tremendous race to erect buildings everywhere, brought to the -city a great concourse of artizans and labourers from all parts of -Germany. Competition gave them big wages, but it also incited the -formation of powerful trades’ unions, the best of which were in effect -Radical clubs, and the worst of which became centres of Socialist -agitation. Berlin has six members in the Reichstag, of which four are -Radicals, or _Freisinnige_, and two are Social Democrats. One of the -Radicals is Prof. Rudolph Virchow, and one of the Socialists is Paul -Singer, a Jew. The municipal institutions of Berlin, so far as they -depend upon the popular vote, are also in the hands of the Radicals. - -So much for the new Berlin. On Oct. 28, 1888, William, who had just -returned from his Italian visit, the last of his series of journeys -for that year, received the Burgomaster and a delegation from the Town -Council, who came to the Schloss to congratulate him upon his return. -They presented an effusively loyal address, clearly intended as a -peace-offering from the Radical city to the new sovereign, and announced -the intention of erecting a great fountain in the Schloss-Platz to -commemorate the event. - -William received this polite expression with studied insolence. After -ironically commenting upon the unexpectedness of such a demonstration, -he brusquely told them to build more churches in Berlin and to choke -off their Radical editors, who, during his absence, had shamelessly -discussed the most private affairs of his family. He had been -particularly angered by their insistence upon drawing comparisons -between himself and his late father, an affront which he would not -longer tolerate. He was about to take up his residence in Berlin, -and “considering the relations which existed between the municipal -authorities of Berlin and this Radical section of the press,” he -concluded that his hearers could stop this editorial impudence if they -liked. Their address was full of loyal professions; very well, let them -put these into practice. - -Having said this in his roughest manner, William turned on his heel and -left the room without shaking hands with the Burgomaster or so much as -nodding to his colleagues. - -This happened four months or so before the change in the young Kaiser’s -views and attitude which has been dealt with above. It is not out of -place here, however, because, although William was now swiftly and with -steady progress to alter his opinions on most other public subjects, he -has not even yet altogether outgrown the notion that editors ought to -wear muzzles. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII.--A YEAR OF EXPERIMENTAL ABSOLUTISM - -The young Emperor’s dislike for the press was indeed a fruitful source -of sensational incidents during the first year or two of his reign, -and still is uneasily felt to contain the elements of possibly further -disturbance. The fault of this attitude is by no means entirely on one -side. Both the character of the Kaiser and the character of the German -press are in large part what Bismarck has made them, and if their less -admirable sides clash and grind into each other with painful friction -from time to time, it is only what might be expected. During Bismarck’s -twenty-eight years of power in Prussia he so by turns debauched and -coerced the press that the adjective “reptile” had to be invented by -outsiders properly to describe its venomous cowardice. He openly and -contemptuously prostituted it to serve his poorest and pettiest uses, -so that it was not possible for any one to think of it with respect; -yet, oddly enough, he always showed the keenest and most thin-skinned -sensitiveness when its attacks or inuendoes were aimed at himself. - -This whimsical susceptibility to affront in the printed word, no matter -how mean or trivial the force back of it, is a trait which has often -come near making Bismarck ridiculous, and it is not pleasant to note -how largely William seems also to be possessed with it. He is as nervous -about what the papers will say as a young _débutante_ on the stage. Not -only does he keep an anxious watch upon the talk of the German editors, -but he ordains a vigilant scrutiny of the articles printed in foreign -countries from the pens of correspondents stationed at Berlin. In this -he is very German. Nobody in England, for example, ever dreams of caring -about, or for the most part of even taking the trouble to learn, what -is printed abroad about English personages or politics. The foreign -correspondents in London are as free as the wind that blows. But matters -were ordered very differently at the beginning of the present reign in -Berlin, and to this day journalists pursue their calling there under -a sense of espionage hardly to be imagined in Fleet Street. It is true -that a change for the better is distinctly visible of late, but it -will be the work of many years to eradicate the low views of German -journalism which Bismarck instilled, alike, unfortunately, in the royal -palaces and the editorial offices of Prussia. - -One of the very first acts of William’s reign was the expulsion from -Berlin of two French journalists whose sympathetic accounts of his -father’s dismissal of Puttkamer had been distasteful to the royal -eye. In the following January the correspondents of the _Figaro_ -and _National_ of Paris were similarly driven out. In March, 1889, -simultaneously with the seizure of the Berlin _Volks-Zeitung_ and the -prosecution of the _Freisinnige Zeitung_, a new Penal Code was presented -to the Reichstag which contained such arbitrary provisions for stamping -out the remaining liberties of the press that even the Cologne _Gazette_ -denounced it as “putting a frightful weapon into the hands of the -Government for suppressing freedom of speech and silencing opposition.” - This measure did not pass, but the odium of having introduced it -remained. - -Although in other respects William was already observed to be separating -himself from his Chancellor, it is clear that he has a large share in -this odium. All his utterances, both at this time and up to the present -date, show how thoroughly he believes in editing the editors. This -tendency was during the year 1889 to exhibit its comical side. - -The special organ of the Waldersee party was the high-and-dry old Tory -journal, the _Kreuz-Zeitung_. Early in the year this mouthpiece of -the anti-Bismarck coalition was raided by the Chancellor, and both its -offices and the house of its editor, Baron Hammerstein, ransacked for -incriminating documents. The Kaiser is believed to have intervened -to prevent more serious steps being taken. Later in the year, as the -success of the Waldersee combination in weaning the Kaiser away from -Bismarck grew more and more marked, the _Kreuz-Zeitung_ foolishly gave -voice to its elation, and attacked the “Cartel” coalition of parties -which controlled the Reichstag. The Kaiser thereupon printed a personal -_communique_ in the official paper saying that he approved of -the “Cartel” and was “unable to reconcile the means by which the -_Kreuz-Zeitung_ assailed it with respect for his own person.” This -warning proved insufficient, for in the following January Baron -Hammerstein put up as a candidate for a vacancy at Bielefeld, and talked -so openly about being the real nominee of the Kaiser that William -caused to be inserted in all the papers a notice of his order that -the _Kreuz-Zeitung_ should not henceforth be taken at any of the royal -palaces, or allowed in public reading-rooms. It may be imagined how the -Liberal editors chuckled over this. - -So recently as in May of last year, two months after the retirement of -Bismarck, when the regular official deputation from the new Reichstag -waited upon William, he pointed out to the Radical members that the -_Freisinnige_ press was criticizing the army estimates, which he and -his generals had made as low as possible, and sharply warned them to see -that a stop was put to such conduct on the part of their friends, the -Radical editors. And only last December, in his remarkable speech to the -Educational Conference, he lightly grouped journalists with the “hunger -candidates” and others who formed an over-educated class “dangerous to -society.” - -This inability to tolerate the expression of opinions different from his -own is very Bismarckian. - -The ex-Chancellor, in fact, has for years past acted and talked upon -the theory that anybody who did not agree with him must of necessity -be unpatriotic, and came at last to hurl the epithet of -_Reichsfeind_--enemy of the Empire--every time any one disputed him on -any point whatsoever. - -William has roughly shorn away Bismarck’s pretence to infallibility, but -about the divine nature of his own claims he has no doubt. Some of his -deliverances on questions of morals and ethics, in his capacity as a -sort of helmeted Northern Pope, are calculated to bring a smile to the -face of the Muse of History. His celebrated harangue to the Rector of -the Berlin University, Professor Gebhardt, wherein he complained that, -under the lead of democratic professors, the students were filled with -destructive political doctrines, and concluded by gruffly saying, “Let -your students go more to churches and less to beer cellars and fencing -saloons”--was put down to his youth, for it dates from the close of -1888. It is interesting to note, from William’s recent speech at Bonn, -that he has decidedly altered his views on both beer-drinking -and duelling among students. He began his reign, however, with -ultra-puritanical notions on these as well as other subjects. - -Long after this early deliverance his confidence in himself, so far -from suffering abatement, had so magnified itself that he called the -professors of another University together and lectured them upon the bad -way in which they taught history. He had discovered, he said, that there -was now much fondness for treating the French Revolution as a great -political movement, not without its helpful and beneficent results. This -pernicious notion must no longer be encouraged in German universities, -but students should be taught to regard the whole thing as one vast and -unmitigated crime against God and man. - -In this dogmatic phase of his character William is much more like -Frederic William I than like any of his nearer ancestors in the -Hohenzollern line. These later monarchs, beginning with Frederic the -Great and following his luminous example, were habitually chary about -bothering themselves with their subjects’ opinions. William at one time -thought a good deal upon the fact that he was a successor of Frederic -the Great, and by fits and starts set himself to imitate the earlier -acts of that sovereign. His restless flying about from place to place, -and, even more clearly, his edicts rebuking the army officers for -gambling and for harshness to their men, were copied from that -illustrious original. But in his attitude toward the mental and -moral liberty of his subjects he goes back a generation to Frederic’s -father--and suggests to us also the reflection that he is a grandson of -that highly self-confident gentleman whom English-speaking people knew -as the Prince Consort. - -Frederic the Great had so little of this spirit in him that he made -himself memorably unique among eighteenth-century sovereigns by allowing -such freedom to the press that liberty sank into license, and the most -scandalous and mendacious attacks upon his personal life were printed -in and hawked about Berlin to the end of his days. As for his refusal to -interfere in the alleged perversion of Protestant children by Catholic -teachers, his comment on the margin of the ministerial complaint, “In -this country every man must get to heaven in his own way,” is justly -cherished to this day as worth all his other writings put together. - -William’s spasms, so to speak, of imitative loyalty to the memories -of his ancestors have been productive of many curious, not to say -diverting, results. Their progressive consecutiveness is not always easy -to make out, but they afford, as a whole, very interesting insights into -the young man’s temperament. - -When tragic chance thrust him forward and upon the throne, his youthful -imagination happened to be in some mysterious way under the spell of -that most astounding of all his forefathers, Frederic William I. He -spoke frequently with enthusiasm of the character of this rude, choleric -barbarian, and even brought himself to believe that there was something -fine in that strange creature’s inability to speak any language but -German. It was under the sway of this admiration for the second Prussian -King that William, in January of 1889, had all the French cooks in his -palaces discharged, and ordered that hereafter the royal bill of fare -should be a _Speisekarte_, with the names of dishes in German, instead -of the accustomed _menu_ in French. It will not, however, have escaped -notice that William is a changeable young man, and this ultra-Teutonic -mood did not last very long. In the following autumn he had so far -recovered from it that his visit to Constantinople was reported to have -been marred by the Sultan’s mistaken hospitality in giving him nothing -but German champagnes to drink. It must be admitted, however, that -scarcely the most robust prejudice could stand out long under such a -test. - -In the spring of 1890 there came the 150th anniversary of the accession -of Frederic the Great, and with it a sudden shift in the young Kaiser’s -admiration. For a long time thereafter he made no speech without -alluding to this most splendid figure in Prussian history, and quoting -him as an example to be followed with reverential loyalty. - -Then in December came the turn of still a third bygone Hohenzollern. It -was on December 1, 1640, that the youth of twenty, who was later to be -known as the Great Elector, entered upon the herculean task of saving -hapless, bankrupt little Brandenburg from literal annihilation. William -has told us that as a boy he scarcely learned anything at all about this -illustrious ancestor of his. Apparently little had been done to make -good this lack of information up to the time when, toward the close of -1890, he found that the Great Elector’s 250th anniversary was near at -hand, and felt that it ought to be celebrated. He began reading the -history of that memorable reign, and was at once excitedly interested -and impressed. There has always been a charming, if childish, _naivete_ -about the manner in which William frankly exposes his mental processes, -and, having just heard of something for the first time which everybody -else knows, brings it forward to public notice as if it were a fresh and -most remarkable discovery. The effect produced upon him by his belated -introduction to the life and works of the last Elector affords an apt -illustration of this tendency. At the celebration William made a long -speech in eulogy of his ancestor, which in every sentence seemed to take -it for granted that heretofore no one had written or thought or known -about the Great Elector. Since that time the young Emperor has rarely -spoken in public, at least to a Prussian audience, without some -reference to this distinguished predecessor--whereas we never hear now -of either Frederic the Great or his savage father. - -Doubtless the fervour with which William has adopted the Great Elector -as his model ancestor is in large part due to the fact that the latter’s -first important act was the summary dismissal of his father’s Prime -Minister, Schwarzenberg. The parallel to be drawn between the disgrace -of this powerful favourite and the fall of Bismarck is often faulty and -nowhere exact, but it is evident that it impressed William’s imagination -greatly when he came upon it, and that he could not resist the -temptation to suggest it to the world at large. In this same anniversary -speech he said: “My stout ancestor had no one to lean upon.” - -The eminent statesman who had served his predecessor was revealed to -have worked for his own personal ends, and the young sovereign was -forced to mark out his own path unaided. The comparison was a cruel -one, because the manner in which Schwarzenberg “worked for his own -personal ends” was that of taking bribes to betray his royal master -and his country. Yet the loose phrase could also describe Bismarck’s -hot-headed use of his vast governmental powers to crush his individual -enemies, and in this sense every one felt that William was instituting a -comparison. - -But this embittered remark belongs to a much later period than has as -yet come under our view, and marks an acute stage of the dramatic and -momentous quarrel between Kaiser and Chancellor, of the dawning of which -there were only vague anticipatory rumours in 1889. - - - - -CHAPTER IX.--A YEAR OF HELPFUL LESSONS - -The first few months of 1889 present nothing of special note to the -observer. There was perhaps a trifle more nervousness on the bourses -during that early spring-time which, for some occult reason, is the -chosen season of alarmist war rumours, than had been usual in the -lifetime of the old Kaiser, but this signified no more than a vague -uneasiness born of the sword-clanking reputation which had preceded -William’s accession to the throne. The surface of events at Berlin -seemed smooth enough, although dissensions and jealousies were warring -fiercely underneath. Everybody was talking about the tremendous battle -going on between the Bismarcks and the Waldersees, but of public -evidence of this conflict there was none, This very reticence shows that -the Chancellor must thus early have become impressed with the menacing -power of the combinations confronting him, for it was never his habit to -be silent about quarrels in which he was confident of victory. He -must have become truly alarmed when, on February 25th, he gave a great -dinner, at which the Kaiser and Waldersee were the principal guests. So -far from creating a false impression of cordiality, this banquet, with -its incongruous people and its hollow gaiety, only strengthened the -notion that Bismarck was toppling. - -In May, however, two things happened which at the time much occupied the -world’s attention--the abortive Strasburg visit incident and the great -miners’ strike in Westphalia. These two episodes are particularly -noteworthy in that they for the first time show us William confronted -by something bigger than questions of personal politics and individual -piques and prejudices. A dangerous international quarrel and a -threatening domestic convulsion loomed up suddenly side by side before -him--and the experience left him a wiser and more serious man. - -To glance first at the incident which, creating the greater furor at the -time, has left the slighter mark upon history--the King of Italy, with -his son and his Premier, came, on May 21st, to visit William in Berlin, -There were many reasons why the reception extended to him should have -been, as indeed it was, of the most affectionate and enthusiastic -character. The old Emperor William had grown to be considered at the -Quirinal as Victor Emmanuel’s best friend, and Prussia was proudly -pleased to be thought of as the chief protector and sponsor of young -United Italy. The more romantic Frederic had cultivated a highly -sentimental intimacy, later on, with King Humbert and Queen Marguerite, -and had made all Rome a party to it by that celebrated spectacular -appearance on the balcony of the Quirinal with the little Italian Crown -Prince in his arms. Thus peculiarly emotional ties bound Humbert now to -Frederic’s son, and his coming to Berlin was hailed as the arrival of a -warm personal friend even more than as the advent of a powerful ally. - -It may have been from mere lightness of heart--conceivably there was a -deeper motive--but at all events William proposed to this good friend -that on his way home they should together visit Strasburg, and the -amiable Humbert, a slow, patient, honest fellow, consented. The -assertion has since been authoritatively made by Italian statesmen that -the idea really originated with the adventurous Italian Premier, Crispi, -and that Bismarck and William merely fell in with it. However that -may it is fact that the visit was agreed upon, and that orders were -despatched to Strasburg to make things ready for the royal party. - -When the news of this intended trip became public, its effect was that -of a shock of earthquake. During the twenty-four hours which elapsed -before the frightened Crispi could issue a statement that the report of -such a visit was a pure Bourse canard, Europe was sensibly nearer a war -than at any time in the last fifteen years. The French press raised -a clamorous and vibrant call to arms, and the politicians of Rome and -Vienna kept the wires to Berlin hot with panic-stricken protests. What -it all meant was, of course, that Europe has tacitly consented to regard -the possession of Alsace-Lorraine as an open question, to be -finally settled when France and Germany fight next time. Upon this -understanding, no outside sovereign has formally sanctioned the -annexation of 1871 by appearing in person within the disputed territory. -King Humbert’s violation of this point of international etiquette would -have been a deliberate blow in the face of the French Republic. Luckily -he had the courage to draw back when the lightnings began playing upon -his path, and with diminishing storm mutterings the cloud passed away. -Its net result had been to show the world William’s foolhardiness in -favouring such a wanton insult to France, and his humiliation in having -publicly to abandon an advertised intention--and the spectacle was not -reassuring. - -The episode is chiefly interesting now because it seems to have been of -great educational value to the young Emperor. It really marked out for -him, in a striking object lesson, the grave international limitations -by which his position is hemmed in. He has never since made another such -false step. Indeed the solitary other cause of friction between France -and Germany which has arisen during his reign proceeded from an action -of a diametrically opposite nature--to wit, an attempt to conciliate -instead of offend. - -Of much more permanent importance in the history of William and of his -Empire was the great miners’ strike in Westphalia, which may be said to -have begun on the 1st of May. This tremendous upheaval of labour at one -time involved the idleness of over 100,000 men--by no means all miners -or all Westphalians. The shortened coal supply affected industries -everywhere, and other trades struck because the spirit of mutiny was -in the air. In many districts the military were called out to guard the -pits’ mouths, and sanguinary conflicts with the strikers ensued. - -Evidently this big convulsion took William completely by surprise. Up -to this time he had been deeply engrossed in the spectacular side of his -position--the showy and laborious routine of an Emperor who is also a -practical working soldier. Such thought as he had given to the great -economic problems pressing for solution all about him, seems to have -been of the most casual sort and cast wholly in the Bismarckian mould. -What Bismarck’s views on this subject were and are, is well known. He -believes that over-education has filled the labouring classes of Germany -with unnatural and unreasonable discontent, which is sedulously played -upon by depraved Socialist agitators, and that the only way to deal -with the trouble is to imprison or banish as many of these latter as -possible, and crush out the disaffection by physical force wherever it -manifests itself. He decorates this position with varying sophistical -frills and furbelows from time to time, but in its essence that is -what he thinks. And up to May of 1889 that is apparently what William -thought, too. - -The huge proportions of this sudden revolt of labour made William -nervous, however, and in this excited state he was open to new -impressions. The anti-Bismarck coalition saw their chance and swiftly -utilized it. With all haste they summoned Dr. Hinzpeter from his home at -Bielefeld, and persuaded William to confer with his old tutor upon this -alarming industrial complication, with which it was clearly enough to be -seen his other advisers did not know how to deal. No exact date is given -for the interview which William had with Dr. Hinzpeter, but the day upon -which it was held should be a memorable one in German history. For -then dawned upon the mind of the young Kaiser that dream of Christian -Socialism with the influence of which we must always thereafter count. - -It is true that the angered and dispossessed ex-Chancellor declares now -that William never was morally affected by the painful aspects of the -labour question, and that he took the side of the workmen solely because -he thought it would pay politically. But men who know the Kaiser equally -well, and who have the added advantage of speaking dispassionately, say -that the new humanitarian views which Dr. Hinzpeter now unfolded to him -took deep hold upon his imagination, and made a lasting mark upon his -character. Even if the weight of evidence were not on its side, one -would like to believe this rather than the cynical theory propounded -from Friedrichsruh. - -William did not become a full-fledged economic philosopher all at once -under this new influence. - -There was a great deal of the rough absolutist in the little harangue -he delivered to the three working-men delegates who, on May 14th, were -admitted to his presence to lay the case of the strikers before him. -He listened gravely to their recital of grievances, asked numerous -questions, and seemed considerably impressed. When their spokesman -had finished he said that he was anxiously watching the situation, -had ordered a careful inquiry into all the facts, and would see that -evenhanded justice was done. Then, in a sharper voice, he warned them -to avoid like poison all Socialist agitators, and specially to see to -it that there were no riots or attempts to prevent the non-strikers -from working. If this warning was not heeded, he concluded, in high -peremptory tones, he would send his troops “to batter and shoot them -down in heaps.” - -It must be admitted that this sentiment does not touch the high-water -mark of Christian Socialism, but the drift of the Kaiser’s mind was -obviously forward. Two days later he received a delegation of mine -masters, and to them spoke rather bitterly of the perversity and -greed of capitalists, and their selfish unwillingness to “make certain -sacrifices in order to terminate this perilous and troublous state -of things.” On May 17th it was announced that Dr. Hinzpeter had been -commissioned to travel through the disturbed districts and report to -the Kaiser upon the origin and merits of the strike. This practically -settled the matter. The masters as a whole made concessions, under which -work was resumed. Those owners who displayed stubbornness were in one -way or another made to feel the imperial displeasure, and soon the -trouble was at an end. It is worthy of note that Germany has since that -time been far less agitated by labour troubles than any of the states -by which she is surrounded, and that upon the occasion of the recent -May-day demonstrations German workmen were practically the only ones on -the Continent who did not come into collision with the police. - -But, after all, the vitally important thing was the reappearance of Dr. -Hinzpeter, involving, as it did, the revival in the young Kaiser’s daily -thoughts and moods of the gentle and softening influences of those old -school days at Cassel, before Bonn and the Bismarcks came to harden and -pervert. - -***** - -Upon the heels of the Strasburg incident followed another flurry in -international politics, which for the moment seemed almost as menacing, -and which hurried forward a highly significant step on the part of -William. - -The precipitate haste with which the young Kaiser had rushed off to -visit St. Petersburg, almost before the public signs of mourning for his -father had been removed in Berlin and Potsdam, had impressed everybody -as curious. Nearly a year had now elapsed, and the failure of the Czar -to say anything about returning the visit was growing to seem odder -still. It was, of course no secret that the Czar did not like William. -No two men could present greater points of difference, physically and -mentally. The autocrat of all the Russias is a huge, lumbering, slow, -and tenacious man, growing somewhat fat with increasing years, hating -all forms of regular exercise, and cherishing a veritable horror of -noisy, overzealous, and bustling people. Every smart public servant -in Russia is governed by the knowledge that his imperial master has -a peculiar aversion to all forms of bother, and values his officials -precisely in proportion as they make short and infrequent reports, free -from all accounts of unpleasant things, and, still more important, from -all meddlesome suggestions of reform. When a Russian diplomat was asked, -a year ago, what the Czar’s personal attitude toward William was, he -answered expressively by shrugging his shoulders and putting his fingers -in his ears. - -But now the Czar, from passively affronting William by not returning his -visit, summoned the energy for a direct provocation. A palace luncheon -was given in St. Petersburg, celebrating the betrothal of a Montenegrin -Princess to a Russian Grand Duke, and the Czar, standing and in a loud, -clear voice, drank to Prince Nikolo of Montenegro as “the only sincere -and faithful friend Russia had” among European sovereigns. That there -might be no doubt about this, the Czar had the words printed next day in -the _Official Messenger_. - -Germany was not slow to comprehend the meaning of this remarkable -speech. But to make it still clearer the Czarowitch, three weeks later, -paid a formal visit to Stuttgart to attend some Court festivities, and -passed through Berlin both going and coming--though the Breslau-Dresden -route would have been more direct--apparently for no other purpose -than to insult the Kaiser by stopping for an hour each time inside the -railway station, as if there were no such people as the Hohenzollerns -to so much as leave a card upon. As a capstone to this insolence, the -Russian officers of his suite refused to drink the toast to the German -Empire at the Stuttgart banquet, and, when a dispute arose, left the -room in a body. - -The immediate effect of this was to remove the last vestige of reserve -existing between William and his English relatives. He at once sent word -that, if convenient, he would visit his grandmother, the Queen, at the -beginning of August. An assurance of hearty welcome was as promptly -returned. - -This decision marked another stage in the decline of Bismarck’s power. -We have seen how he had been gradually pushed aside in the management of -German internal affairs. Now the Kaiser was to break through the dearest -traditions of Bismarck’s foreign policy--the cultivation of Russian -amiability at whatever cost of dignity, and the contemptuous snubbing of -England. With a fatal inability to distinguish between the promptings -of passion and the dictates of true policy, the Chancellor had been led -into a position where he could maintain himself only if every one of the -elements and chances combined to play his game for him, and keep William -at daggers-drawn with all things English. The miracle did not happen. -As we have seen, even the Czar took it into his head to interfere to the -damage of Bismarck’s plans. - -So the perplexed and baffled old Chancellor, noting with new rage and -mortification how power was slipping from his hands, yet helpless to do -other than fight doggedly to hold what yet remained, stopped behind in -Berlin, the while Kaiser William steamed at the head of his splendid -new squadron into Portsmouth Harbour, and the very sea shook with the -thunderous cannon roar of his welcome. The world had never before seen -such a show of fighting ships as was gathered before Cowes to greet him. -There was one other thing which may be assumed to have been unique -in human chronicles. William, in the exuberance of his delight at his -really splendid reception, and at being created a British Admiral, -issued a solemn imperial order making his grandmother a Colonel of -Dragoons. - -The English did well to surround the young Kaiser’s visit with all -imaginable pomp and display of overwhelming naval force, for it meant -very much more both to them and to him than any one is likely to have -imagined at the time. The splendour of the material spectacle, and the -sentimental interest attaching to the fact that this young man coming -to greet his grandmother was the first German Emperor to set foot on -English soil since the days of the Crusaders, were much-dwelt upon in -the press. To us who have been striving to trace the inner workings of -the influences shaping the young man’s character, the event has a nearer -significance. It meant that William--having for years been estranged -from the liberalizing English impulses and feelings of his boyish -education; having since his majority exulted in the false notion that to -be truly German involved hatred of all things English--had come to see -his mistake. - -It is not possible to exaggerate the importance of this visit, and of -the causes leading up to it, upon William’s mind. The Hohenzollerns, -until within our own times the comparatively needy Princes of a poor -country, have always been greatly impressed by the superior wealth -and luxurious civilization of the English. The famous Double-Marriage -project of Frederic William I’s days was clung to in Berlin through -years of British snubs and rebuffs because thrifty Prussian eyes saw -these islands through a golden mist. To the imagination of German -royalty, English Princesses appear in the guise of fairies, not -invariably beautiful, perhaps, but each bearing the purse of Fortunatus. -This view of the English colours the thoughts of more lowly-born -Germans. When Freytag * seeks to explain the late Kaiser Frederic’s -complete and almost worshipping subjection to his wife, he says: “She -had come to him from superior surroundings.” - - * “The Crown Prince and the German Imperial Crown,” p. 49. - -William had tried hard, in his ultra-German days, to despise English -wealth along with English political ideas. The theory of a Spartan -severity, governing expenditure and all other conditions of daily life, -was the keynote of his Teutonic period. But when he became Kaiser he had -yielded to the temptation of getting the Reichstag to augment his annual -civil list by 3,500,000 marks. That in itself considerably modified his -austere hatred of luxury. Now, as the guest of the richest nation in -the-world, he was able to feel himself a relative, and wholly at home. -The English conquest of William was complete. - -No hint of unfilial conduct had been heard, now, for a long time, nor -was henceforth to be heard. William had by this time become fully -reconciled to his mother, and in the following month, September of 1889, -he purchased for and presented to her the Villa Reiss, a delightful -summer _chateau_ in the Taunus Mountains. - -Thereafter a strong sympathy with England has manifested itself in all -his actions. The Czar did at last, in the most frosty, formal manner, -pay a brief visit to Berlin, and William the following year returned the -courtesy by attending the Russian manoeuvres, but this has not at all -affected his open preference for English friendship. He always spoke -German with an English accent--which now is more marked than ever. - -He has a bewildering variety of uniforms, but the one which affords -him the greatest pride is the dress of the British Admiral. He wears it -whenever the least excuse offers. Upon his journey to Athens in October -of 1889, to attend the wedding of his sister and the Greek Crown Prince, -he was so much affected by his new English naval title that when he -steamed into the classic Ægean Sea on his imperial yacht he flew the -British Admiral’s flag from her top. A British fleet was also there -to participate in the ceremonies, and William took his new position so -seriously, and had such delight in descending suddenly upon the squadron -at unexpected and unreasonable hours, and routing everybody out for -parade and inspection, that the British officers themselves revolted and -preferred an informal complaint to the British Minister. “This thing is -played out,” they said. “If he would merely wear the uniform and let -it end with that, we shouldn’t mind. But we didn’t make him Admiral to -worry the lives out of us in this fashion.” - - - - -CHAPTER X.--THE FALL OF THE BISMARCKS - -We have come now to a time when the effects of this reasserted English -influence began to be apparent throughout Germany. Since his successful -tour through the Westphalian strike district, Dr. Hinzpeter had been -visibly growing in men’s eyes as the new power behind the throne. -Another friend of William’s, Count William Douglas, began also to -attract attention. This nobleman, ten years older than the Kaiser, and a -capable writer and speaker as well as soldier is a descendant of one of -the numerous Scotch cadets of aristocratic families who carried their -swords into Continental service when the Stuarts were driven from the -British throne. Both in appearance and temperament no one could be more -wholly German than Count Douglas is, but his intimacy with William only -became marked after the English visit. - -Immediately upon his return from England, William delivered a speech at -Münster in which he eulogized Hinzpeter as a representative Westphalian, -whose splendid principles he had imbibed in his boyhood. During the -ensuing autumn and winter the presence of Dr. Hinzpeter at the palace -became so much a matter of comment that some of Bismarck’s “reptile” - papers began to complain that if the Westphalian was to exert such power -he ought to take office so that he could be openly discussed. - -Similar attacks were made by the Chancellor’s organs upon Count Douglas, -who had written a very complimentary pamphlet about the young -Kaiser shortly after his accession, and who now, as an Independent -Conservative, was thought to reflect the Kaiser’s own political -preferences. Public opinion bracketed Hinzpeter and Douglas together as -the active forces at the head of the Waldersee coalition, and we shall -see that William himself treated them as such when the time for action -came. - -New men had gradually supplanted old ones in many important official -posts. The gentlest of soft hints had long since (in August of 1888) -been borne in by a little bird to the aged Count von Moltke, and he, on -the instant, with the perfect dignity and pure gentility of his nature, -had responded with a request to be permitted to retire from active -labour. His letter, with its quaintly pathetic explanation that “I am -no longer able to mount a horse.” was answered with effusion by William, -who visited him personally at his residence, and made him President of -the National Defence Commission, _vice_ the Emperor Frederic, deceased. -Later events rendered it natural to contrast the loyal behaviour of the -great soldier with the mutinous and perverse conduct of the statesman -whose name is popularly linked with his, and during the last year of his -life Moltke existed in a veritable apotheosis of demonstrative imperial -affection, which indeed followed his coffin to the grave with such -symbols of royal favour as no commoner’s bier had ever before borne in -Germany. - -Somewhat later the Minister of Marine, General von Caprivi, received a -delicate intimation that the Kaiser thought a soldier was out of place -in charge of the navy, and he also promptly but gracefully resigned, and -accepted the command of an army corps instead with cheerful obedience. -It is a great gift to know when and how to get out, and Caprivi did it -so amiably and intelligently that the Kaiser made a mental note of him -as a good man to rely upon when the time should come. - -General Bronsart von Schellendorf similarly resigned the War Ministry. -He was a descendant of one of the large colony of Huguenot families -which took refuge in Berlin after the revocation of the Edict of -Nantes--and it was a strange freak of Fate’s irony which, in 1871, sent -him as Colonel out from the German headquarters before Sedan to convey -a demand for surrender to the French Emperor. Curiously enough he was -succeeded now as Minister of War by another descendant of these exiled -French Protestants, General von Verdy du Vernois, the ablest military -writer of his generation, a notably clever organizer and a deservedly -popular man. - -Neither von Verdy nor Waldersee, who succeeded to Moltke’s proud position -as Chief of the General Staff, remained long in their new posts. -The world had nothing but vague surmises as to the causes of their -retirement, and, noting that they still retain the friendly regard of -their sovereign, did not dally long with these. Here again the contrast -forces itself upon public attention, for these two good soldiers -and able administrators neither sought interviews with travelling -correspondents in which to vent their grievances, nor inspired spiteful -attacks in provincial newspapers against their young chief. They went -loyally out of office, as they had entered it, and kept their silence. - -Thus throughout the public service, civil and military alike, these -changes went forward--the greybeards who had helped to create the Empire -on the field or in the council-room, one by one stepping down and out to -make room for the new generation--but Bismarck, though becoming more and -more isolated, clung resolutely to his place. It was no secret to him -that the Kaiser’s principal advisers and friends were keen to throw him -out of the Chancellorship; it must have long been apparent to him that -the Kaiser was accustoming his mind to thoughts of a Berlin without -Bismarck. But the Iron Chancellor had neither the simple dignity of -Moltke nor the shrewd suavity of Caprivi. He would not leave until he -had been violently thrust forth, and even then he would stand on the -doorstep and shout. - -The opponents of Bismarck had long been gathering their forces for a -grand attack. Their difficulty had been the unwillingness of the Kaiser -definitely to give his assent to the overthrow of the great man. Often, -in moments of impatience at the autocratic airs assumed by Bismarck and -his son, William had seemed on the point of turning down his thumb as a -signal for slaughter. But there always would come a realization of how -mighty a figure in German history Bismarck truly was--and perhaps, too, -some modified reassertion of the tremendous personal influence with -which for years the Chancellor had magnetized him. Almost to the end the -young man had recurring spasms of subjection to this old ideal of his -youth. Even while he was sporting his British ensign in Greek waters, -and showing to the whole world how completely the breach between him and -English royalty had been healed, he salved his conscience, as it were, -by addressing enthusiastic and affectionate despatches to Bismarck from -every new stopping-place on those classic shores. - -But now, in January of 1890, the long-looked-for opportunity came. The -natural term of the Reichstag elected in 1887--the last one chosen -for only three years’ service--was on the point of expiration. The -anti-Socialist penal laws would lapse in September of 1890 unless -renewed either by this dying Reichstag or, without delay, by its -successor. Prince Bismarck was, of course, committed to their prompt -and emphatic renewal. His enemies--another term for William’s new -friends--had secretly been preparing for the defeat of these laws in -the Reichstag, and now, in the middle of the month, found that they had -secured an absolute majority. They conveyed this fact to the Kaiser, -with the obvious corollary that the time had arrived for him to take the -popular lead in his Empire, and make an issue on this question with his -Chancellor. William saw the point, and reluctantly took the decisive -step. - -Space permits only the most cursory glance at this parliamentary -battlefield, whereon Bismarck had waged so many rough Berserker fights, -and which now was to see his complete annihilation. - -The Reichstag at Berlin is by no means powerful in the sense that -Parliament is in London or Congress in Washington. It is a convention of -spectacled professors, country nobles, and professional men desirous of -advertisement or the pretence of employment, with a sprinkling of smart -financiers and professional politicians who have personal ends to serve. -They play at legislation--some seriously, others not--but as a rule what -they do and say makes next to no difference whatever. They have not -even the power of initiating legislation. That function belongs to the -Bundes-rath or Federal Council, which means the Prussian Ministry, which -in turn meant Bismarck. His historic conception of law-making was to -combine by bribes and threats a sufficient number of the fragmentary -parties to constitute a majority, and to use this to pass his measures -as far as it would go. Then he would swing around, create a different -majority out of other groups, and carry forward another line of -legislation. In turn he had been at the head of every important -political faction and the enemy of each, and if he was unable to get his -way through one combination always managed sooner or later to obtain it -by a new shaking-up of the dice. - -Parliamentary institutions were not always at this low estate in -Prussia. Three hundred years ago the Brandenburg Diet was a strong and -influential body, which stoutly held the purse-strings and gave the law -to sovereigns. The Hohenzollerns broke it down, first by establishing -and fostering _Stände_, or small local diets, to dispute its power and -jurisdiction, and then, in 1652, by the Great Elector boldly putting -his mailed heel on it as a nuisance. It still lingered on in a formal, -colourless, ineffective fashion until in the time of Frederic William -I, when it was contemptuously kicked out of sight. That stalwart despot -explained this parting kick by saying: “I am establishing the King’s -sovereignty like a rock of bronze;” and, whatever its composition, -there the rock stood indubitably in all men’s sight for much more than a -century, with neither parliaments to shake its foundations nor powerful -ministers to crumble away its sides. - -Bismarck had made it a condition of his acceptance of office in 1862 -that he would govern Prussia without a Parliament. When the fortune -of war and the federation of the states enlarged the scope of his -responsibilities to the limits of the new Empire, he proceeded upon the -same autocratic lines. There was a greater necessity, it is true, of -pretending to defer to the parliamentary idea, but he never dissembled -his disgust at this necessity. He bullied the leaders of the opposition -factions with such open coarseness, imputing evil and dishonest motives, -introducing details of personal life which his spies had gathered, and -using all the great powers at his command to insult and injure, that a -large proportion of the educated and refined gentlemen of Germany, who -should have been its natural political leaders, either declined to enter -the Reichstag at all, or withdrew, disheartened and humiliated, after a -brief term of service. All this reflected, and brought down in embodied -form into our own times, the traditional attitude of the Hohenzollerns -toward the poor thing called a Parliament. - -It was therefore very much of an anachronism to find, in the year of -grace 1890, a Prussian King invoking the aid of a Parliament to help him -encompass the overthrow of his Prime Minister. - -The situation on January 20th, briefly stated, was this: The Reichstag, -consisting of 397 members, had been governed by Bismarck’s “Cartel” - combination of 94 National Liberals, 78 Conservatives, and 37 -Imperialists, a clear majority of 21. The efforts of the Waldersee -party, however, had honeycombed this majority with disaffection, and the -National Liberals had been induced to agree that they would not vote for -a renewal of the clause giving the Government power to expel obnoxious -citizens. On the other hand, the Conservatives promised not to vote for -the renewal of the anti-Socialist law at all unless it contained the -expulsion clause. Thus, of course, the measure was bound to fall between -two stools. This apparent clashing of cross purposes might have been -stopped in ten minutes if it had proceeded spontaneously from the two -factions themselves. But everybody knew that it had been carefully -arranged from above, and that the leader of each party had had an -interview with the Kaiser. This affectation of irreconcilable views on -the expulsion clause, therefore, deceived no one--least of all Prince -Bismarck. He ostentatiously remained at Friedrichsruh until the very -last day of the Reichstag; then, indeed, he arrived in Berlin, but did -not deign to show himself at either the Chamber or the Schloss. - -The National Liberals voted down the expulsion clause on January -23rd. Then the Conservatives, two days later, joined the Clerical, -_Freisinnige_, and Socialist Parties in throwing out the whole measure. -Thereupon the dissolution of the Reichstag was immediately announced, -and the members proceeded to the Schloss to receive their formal -dismissal from the Kaiser. William spoke somewhat more nervously than -usual, but was extremely cordial in his manner. He praised the labours -of the Reichstag, dwelt upon his desires to improve the condition of -the working classes, and said never a word about the defeated Socialist -laws. Everybody felt that the imperial reticence and the absence of -Bismarck portended big events. - -Next week came the first overt movement in the struggle which all -Germany now realized that Bismarck was waging for political life itself. -He resigned his minor post as Prussian Minister of Commerce, and the -place was promptly filled by the appointment of Baron Berlepsch. This -selection was felt to be symbolical--because Berlepsch had been Governor -of the Rhineland during the strikes, and had managed to preserve order -without recourse to violence, and to gain the liking of the working -men. To make the meaning of this promotion more clear, the Governor of -Westphalia, who had rushed to declare his province in a state of siege -when the strike broke out, and had called in soldiers to overawe the -miners, was now curtly dismissed from office. - -All this signified that the Hinzpeter propaganda of Christian Socialism -had at last definitely captured the young Kaiser. Once enlisted, he -threw himself with characteristic vehemence of energy into the movement. -Events now crowded on each other’s heels. - -On February 4th William issued his famous brace of rescripts to Bismarck -and to the Minister of Commerce, reciting the woes and perils of German -industrial classes, and ordaining negotiations with certain European -States for a Labour Conference, “with a view to coming to an -understanding about the possibility of complying with the needs and -desires of labourers, as manifested by them during the strikes of the -last few years and otherwise.” - -“I am resolved,” wrote the Emperor, “to lend my hand toward bettering -the condition of German working men as far as my solicitude for their -welfare is reconcilable with the necessity of enabling German industry -to retain its power of competing in the world’s market, and thus -securing its own existence and that of its labourers. The dwindling of -our native industries through any such loss of their foreign-markets -would deprive not only the masters, but the men, of their bread.... The -difficulties in the way of improving our working men’s condition have -their origin in the stress of international competition, and are only -to be surmounted, or lessened, by international agreement between those -countries which dominate the world’s market.” Hence, he had decided upon -summoning an International Labour Conference. - -On the evening of the day on which William thus astonished Germany and -Europe, he was the principal guest at a dinner given by Bismarck in his -palatial residence in the Wilhelmstrasse, and it was noted that he -took special pleasure in talking with Dr. Miquel, Chief Burgomaster of -Frankfort, to whom he spoke with zeal and at length upon his desire -to promote the welfare and protect the natural rights of the labouring -classes. Court gossip was swift to mark Miquel as a coming man, and to -draw deductions of its own from the story that Bismarck had, even as the -host of an emperor, seemed preoccupied and depressed. - -A fortnight of unexampled uncertainty, of contradictory guesses and -paradoxical rumours, now kept Berlin, and all Germany for that matter, -in anxious suspense. That Bismarck had been confronted with a crisis -was evident enough. Day after day he was seen to be holding prolonged -conferences with the young Emperor, and the wildest surmises as to the -character of these interviews obtained currency. There were stories -of stormy scenes, of excited imperial dictation and angry ministerial -resistance, which had no value whatever as contributions to the sum of -popular information, but which were everywhere eagerly discussed. The -weight of Berlin opinion inclined toward the theory that Bismarck would -in the end submit. He had never in his life shown any disposition to -make sacrifices for political consistency, and it was assumed that, once -his personal objections were overcome, he would not at all mind adapting -his political position to the new order of things. This view was, of -course, based upon the idea that the Kaiser really desired to retain -Bismarck in office; the loosest German imagination did not conceive the -actual truth: to wit, that the Chancellor’s retirement had been decided -upon, and was the one end at which all these mystifying moves and -counter-moves aimed. - -The preparations for the Conference went on, meanwhile. A new Council of -State for Prussia was founded, to have charge of the general social and -fiscal reforms contemplated. The public noted that chief among the names -gazetted were those of Dr. Hinzpeter and Count Douglas, and these were -given such associates as Herr Krupp, of Essen; Prince Pless, a great -Silesian mine-owner; Baron von Stumm, another large employer; and Baron -von Hune, a leading Catholic and important landed proprietor. These -were new strong names, altogether out of the old Bismarckian official -rut, and their significance was emphasized by the Emperor’s selection -of Dr. Miquel as reporter of the Council. People recognized that -events were being shaped at last from the royal palace instead of the -Chancellery. - -In the very middle of this period of political suspense came the -elections for the new Reichstag. Never before had Germany seen such -a lamb-like and sweet-tempered electoral campaign. Three years before -Bismarck had literally moved heaven and earth to wrest a majority from -the ballot-boxes, for he had induced the Vatican to formally recommend -his nominees to Catholic voters, and had gone far beyond the bounds of -diplomatic safety in his famous “_sturm und drang_” speech, threatening -nothing less than war if a hostile Reichstag should be elected. But this -time he preserved an obstinate and ominous silence. Nothing could tempt -him to say a word in favour of any candidate. - -Under the double influence of the Kaiser’s enthusiastic new Socialism -and the Chancellor’s grim seclusion, the German electorate knocked -the old “Cartel” parties into splinters. The polling results amazed -everybody. Of the “Cartel” factions, the National Liberals fell from 94 -to 39, the Conservatives from 78 to 66, and the Imperialists from 37 to -20. On the other hand, the _Freisinnigen_ rose from 35 to 80, and the -Socialists from 11 to 37. Equally interesting was the fact that for -the first time the German imperial idea had made an impression on the -Alsacian mind, and from sending a solid delegation of 15 dissentients, -the two conquered provinces now elected 5 who accepted the situation. - -Allusion has heretofore been made to Bismarck’s recent declaration that -the Kaiser took up the whole Social-reform policy solely as a political -dodge. If we could accept this theory, it would be of distinct interest -to know what William thought of his bargain, after the returns were -all in. The stupendous triumph of the dreaded Socialists and hated -_Freisinnigen_ must have indeed been a bitter mouthful to the proud -young Hohenzollern. But he swallowed it manfully, and the results have -been the reverse of harmful. No parliamentary session of the year, -anywhere in the world, was more businesslike, dignified, and patriotic -than that of the new Reichstag at Berlin. - -But at the outset this political earthquake threw William into a -great state of excitement. One might almost say that the electrical -disturbances which ushered in the convulsion affected the young man’s -mind, for he did perhaps his most eccentric action on election day. -While the voters of Berlin were going to the polls at noon, on this 20th -of February, the Kaiser suddenly “alarmed” the entire garrison of the -capital, and sent the whole surprised force, cavalry, artillery, baggage -trains and foot, rattling and scurrying through the streets of the -capital at their utmost speed. It turned out to be nothing more serious -than an abrupt freak of the Kaiser to utilize the fine weather for a -drill on the Tempelhof. At least that was the explanation given: but -the spectacle produced a sinister impression at the time, and there -are still those who believe it to have been intended to influence and -overawe the voters. - -No doubt consciousness of the gravity of the quarrel with Bismarck, -which the Kaiser and his new friends saw now must come swiftly to a -point, contributed with the unexpected election results to temporarily -unsettle William’s nerves. For a week or so, during this momentous -period, there were actual fears lest his mental balance should break -down under the strain. Fortunately the excited tension relaxed itself in -good time, and there has since been no recurrence of the symptoms which -then caused genuine alarm. - -It was at the culmination of this unsettled period that William made his -celebrated speech to the Brandenburg Diet. The occasion was the session -dinner, March 5th, and those present noted that the Kaiser’s manner was -unwontedly _distrait_ and abstracted. His words curiously reflected his -mood--half poetic, half pugilistic. He began by a tender reference to -the way in which the Brandenburgers had through evil and joyous days -alike stood at the back of the Hohenzollerns. With a gloomy sigh he -added: “It is in the hour of need that one comes to know his true -friends.” After an abrupt reference to a joke which had recently been -made about him as the _reisende_, or Travelling, Kaiser, and a pedagogic -injunction to his hearers to by all means travel as much in foreign -lands as they could, he drifted into a lofty and beautiful description -of the spiritualizing effects his recent sea voyages had had upon him. -Standing alone on the great deck at night, he said, communing with the -vast starry firmament, he had been able to look beyond politics and to -realize the magnitude and tremendous responsibilities of the position -he held. He had returned with a new and more exalted resolve to rule -mercifully and well under God’s providence, and to benefit all his -people. Then there came a sudden anti-climax to this graceful and -captivating rhetoric. “All who will assist me in my great task,” he -called out, throwing a lion’s glance over the tables, “I shall heartily -welcome; but those who attempt to oppose me I will dash to pieces!” - -The reporters were so frightened at these menacing words that they toned -them down in their accounts of the speech; but the Kaiser with his own -hand restored the original expression in the report of the official -_Reichsanzeiger_. Naturally the phrase created a painful sensation -throughout Germany. Everybody leaped to the conclusion that the threat -was levelled at the Socialist and Radical leaders in particular, and the -new Reichstag in general. But within a fortnight the astonished world -learned that it was Bismarck who was to be dashed to pieces. - -***** - -The time has not yet arrived for a detailed account of the circumstances -surrounding Bismarck’s actual fall. We have been able to trace clearly -enough the progression of causes and changes which led up to that fall. -Of the event itself a great deal has been printed, but extremely little -is known. The reason for this is simple. The Kaiser and his present -friends are possessed with the rigid Prussian military sense of the duty -of absolute silence about official secrets. Prince Bismarck has insisted -vehemently upon the necessity of this quality in other people, yet -has not always distinguished himself by respecting its demands. In his -surprising latter-day garrulity, it is easy to believe that he would -tell the story about which the others preserve so strict a reticence, if -it were not that the story involves his own cruel personal humiliation. - -Throughout the trying crisis William never lost sight of the proud and -historic reputation of the man with whom he had to deal, or of the great -personal reverence and affection which he, as a young King, owed to this -giant among European statesmen, this most illustrious of the servants of -his dynasty, this true creator of the new German Empire. Every step of -the Emperor during the whole affair is marked with delicate courtesy -and the most painstaking anxiety to avoid giving the doomed Chancellor -unnecessary pain. Although it was entirely settled in the more intimate -palace counsels at the end of 1889 that the Prince was to be retired -from office, William sent him the following New Year’s greeting, than -which nothing could be more cordial or kindly: - -_“In view of the impending change from one year to another, I send you, -dear Prince, my heartiest and warmest congratulations. I look back on -the expiring year, in which it was vouchsafed to us not only to preserve -to our dear Fatherland external peace, but also to strengthen the -pledges of its maintenance, with sincere gratitude to God. It is to me -also a matter for deep satisfaction that, with the trusty aid of the -Reichstag, we have secured the law establishing old age and indigence -assurance, and thus taken a considerable forward step toward the -realization of that solicitude for the welfare of the working classes -which I have so wholly at heart. I know well how large a share of this -success is due to your self-sacrificing and creative energy, and I -pray God that He may for many more years grant me the benefit of your -approved and trusted counsel in my difficult and responsible post as -ruler._ - -“_Wilhelm._ - -“_Berlin, Dec. 31,1889.”_ - -A few days later came the death of the venerable Empress Augusta, -and William wrote again to Bismarck at Friedrichsruh, affectionately -enjoining him not to endanger his health by trying to make the winter -journey to Berlin for the funeral. - -This friendly attitude was, to the Kaiser’s mind, entirely compatible -with the decision that a new Chancellor was needed to carry on the -enlightened programme of the new reign. But Bismarck stubbornly -refused to recognize this. When his obstinacy made peremptory measures -necessary, he had even the bad taste to instance these recent amiable -messages as proofs of the duplicity with which he had been treated. - -The best authenticated story in Berlin, of all the legion grown up -about this historic episode, is to the effect that one afternoon, in the -course of an interview between Kaiser and Chancellor on the approaching -Labour Conference, Bismarck was incautious enough to use the old -familiar threat of resignation with which he had been wont to terrify -and subdue the first Kaiser. Young William said nothing, but two or -three hours later an imperial _aide-de-camp_ appeared at the Foreign -Office in Wilhelmstrasse with the statement that he had come for that -resignation. Bismarck, flushed and shaken, sent an evasive reply. The -_aide-de-camp_ came again, with a reiterated demand. Bismarck stammered -out that he had not had the time to write it as yet, but that he would -himself wait upon the Emperor with it the next day. He made this visit -to the Schloss, prepared to urge with all the powers at his command, in -the stress of a personal appeal, that the demand be reconsidered. But -at the palace he was met with that equivalent for the housemaid’s -transparent “Not at home” which is used in the halls of kings; and on -his return to Wilhelmstrasse he found the inexorable _aide-de-camp_ once -more waiting for the resignation. Then only, in bitter mortification and -wrath, did Bismarck write out his own official death-warrant, which a -few days later was to be followed by his son Herbert’s resignation. - -The widely circulated report that, in his extremity, the Chancellor -appealed for aid to the Empress Frederic, seems to be apocryphal. It -is certain, however, that he did, during the twenty-four hours in which -that stolidly-waiting _aide-de-camp_ darkened his life, make strenuous -efforts in other almost equally unlikely and hostile quarters to save -himself. They availed nothing save to reveal in some dim fashion to his -racked and despairing mind how deeply and implacably he was hated by -the officials and magnates all about him. But to the general public, -astonished and bewildered at this sudden necessity to imagine a Germany -without Bismarck, the glamour about his name was still dazzling. When it -came their turn to act, they made the fallen Chancellor’s departure from -Berlin a great popular demonstration. It is well that they did so. With -all his faults, Bismarck was _the_ chief German of his generation, -and the spectacle of cold-blooded desertion which the official and -journalistic classes of Berlin presented in their attitude toward him -upon the instant of his tumble, offended human nature. Nothing could be -more true than that he himself was responsible for this attitude. It was -the only possible harvest to be expected from his sowing. He had done -his best to make all preferment and power in Germany depend upon callous -treachery and the calculation of self-interest. He had contemptuously -thrust ideals and generous aspirations out of the domain of practical -politics. He had systematically accustomed the German mind to the rule -of force and cunning, to the savage crushing of political opponents, and -the shameless use of slander and scandal as political weapons. That -this official mind of his own moulding, inured to sacrificial horrors, -familiar with the spectacle of statesmen destroyed and eminent -politicians flung headlong from the “rock of bronze,” should have -viewed his own prodigious downward crash without pity, was not at all -unnatural. But for the credit of Germany with the outside world it is -fortunate that the Berliners, as a whole, responded to the pathetic side -of the episode. - -William’s emotional nature was peculiarly stirred by the separation, -when it finally came. The _Reichsanzeiger_ of March 20th--two days after -the final act in the comedy of the unresigned resignation--contained -the imperial message granting Prince Bismarck permission to retire. The -phraseology of the document was excessively eulogistic of the passing -statesman, and no hint of differing opinions was allowed to appear. -Bismarck was created Duke of Lauenburg, and given the rank of a Field -Marshal. - -More eloquent by far, however, than any rhetorical professions of grief -in his public proclamations, were the Emperor’s statements to personal -friends of the distress he suffered at seeing Bismarck depart. The -ordeal was rendered none the less painful by the fact that it had -been foreseen for months, or by the consideration that it was really -unavoidable. On the 22nd William wrote to an intimate, in response to a -message of sympathy: - -_“Many thanks for your kindly letter. I have, indeed, gone through -bitter experiences, and have passed many painful hours. My heart is as -sorrowful as if I had again lost my grandfather. But it is so ordered -for me by God, and it must be borne, even if I should sink under the -burden. The post of officer of the watch on the Ship of State has -devolved upon me. Her course remains the same. So now full steam -ahead!”_ - - - - -CHAPTER XI--A YEAR WITHOUT BISMARCK - -The first and most obvious thing to be said of the twelvemonth during -which the Ship of State has sailed with no Bismarck at the helm, is that -the course has been one of novel smoothness. Since the foundation of -the Empire Germany has not known such another tranquil and comfortable -period. Nothing has arisen calculated to make men regret the -ex-Chancellor’s retirement. Almost every month has contributed some new -warrant for the now practically unanimous sense of satisfaction in his -being out of office. When astounded Germany first grasped the fact of -his downfall, even those whose hatred of him was most implacable could -not dissemble their nervousness lest Germany should be the sufferer -in some way by it. He had so persistently kept before the mind of the -nation that they were surrounded by vindictive armed enemies; he had -year after year so industriously beaten the war drum and predicted the -speedy breaking of the storm-clouds if his own way were denied him; -he had so accustomed everybody to the idea that he was personally -responsible for the continued existence from day to day of the German -Empire, the peace of Europe, and almost every other desirable thing, -that the mere thought of what would happen now he was actually gone -dazed and terrified the public mind. - -But lo! nothing whatever happened. The world continued its placid sweep -through space without the sign of an interruption. The spring sun rose -in the marshes of the Vistula and set behind the fir-clad ridges of the -Vosges, just the same as ever. When Germany recovered her breath after -the shock, it was to discover that respiration was an easier matter than -it had formerly been. It was really a weight which had been lifted from -the national breast. The sensation gradually took form as one of great -relief, akin to that of filling the lungs to their utmost with the -cool morning air after a night of confinement, unrest, and a tainted -atmosphere. It is too much to say that apprehension fled at once; -the anxious habit of mind still exists in Germany, and, indeed, must -continue to exist so long as France and Russia stand on the map where -they do. But a very short space of time served to make clear that -Germany was in adroit and capable hands, and that the old-time notion of -the impossibility of supporting national life without Bismarck had been -the most childish of chimeras. Then little by little the new civility, -freedom, and absence of friction which began to mark Parliamentary -debates and official administration, attracted notice. The spectacle of -a Chancellor who actually assumed the patriotism and personal honour -of his political opponents in the Reichstag, who spoke to them like -reasonable beings, and who said their views and criticisms would always -receive his-respectful consideration, was not lost upon the German -brain. People found themselves, before long, actively liking the new -_régime_. - -In reaching this attitude they were greatly helped by Bismarck’s own -behaviour, after he retired to Friedrichsruh. It does not fall within -the purpose of this work to dwell upon the unhappy way in which, during -the year, this statesman who was so great has laboured to belittle -himself in the eyes of the world. Allusion to it is made here only -to append the note that the Kaiser, under extreme provocation, -has steadfastly declined to sanction the slightest movement toward -reprisals. Although Bismarck has permitted himself to affront authority -much more openly and seriously than Count Harry von Arnim ever did, his -threats, his revelations, and his incitements to schism have all been -treated with serene indifference. And so, too, we may pass them by, and -push on to greater matters. - -On May 6th the new Reichstag was opened by a speech from the throne, -almost exclusively reflecting the Emperor’s absorption in schemes of -social reform and progress, and the new Chancellor, Caprivi, laid before -Parliament a Trades Law Amendment Act, as a first attempt at embodying -these schemes. After a year of deliberation this measure has just -been passed, and, unless the Federal Council interposes some wholly -unlooked-for obstacles, will come into effect on April 1, 1892. By this -law Sunday labour is absolutely forbidden in all industries, save -a selected few connected with entertainment and travelling, and the -integrity of the great Church festival holidays is also secured. The -Federal Council is given the power to supervise and control the maximum -hours of labour in such trades as endanger the health of workmen by -overwork. Both journeymen and apprentices are to be able to bring -suit against their employers for wrongful dismissal. Female labour is -forbidden at night, and is given at all times a maximum of eleven hours. -Careful restrictions are also placed upon juvenile labour, and after -April of 1894 children under the age of thirteen are not to be employed -at all in factories. These reforms, which practically embody the -recommendations of the Labour Conference, do little more than bring -Germany abreast of England and America. A more extended programme of -social reform is promised when the Reichstag meets again next November. - -But it is not on specific achievements that the tremendous popularity -which William has won for himself during the past year is founded. We -are by no means within view of the end of the game, but it is already -apparent that his greatest strength lies in the certainty and sureness -of touch with which he appeals to the inborn German liking for lofty and -noble visions of actions. The possibility--probability if you like--that -these visions will never get themselves materialized, is not so -important as it seems. Socialism in Germany is far more a matter of -imagination than of fact. Mr. Baring-Gould quotes an observer of the -election phenomena of 1878, to show that “decorous people, dressed in -an unexceptionable manner, and even to some extent wearing kid-gloves,” - went to the polls as Socialists then. This has been still more true -of later elections. The element of imaginative men who had themselves -little or nothing to complain of, but who dreamed of a vague Social -Democracy as an idealized refuge from the harsh, dry bureaucracy and -brutal militarism of Bismarck’s government, played a large and larger -part in each successive augmentation of the Socialists’ voting strength. -For want of a better word we may say that William is a dreamer too. In -place of their amorphous Utopia, he throws upon the canvas before the -Socialists the splendid fantasy of a beneficent absolutism which shall -be also a democracy, in which everybody shall be good to everybody else, -and all shall sleep soundly every night, rocked in the consciousness -that their Kaiser is looking out for them, to see justice done in every -corner, and happiness the law of the land. - -It is all fantastic, no doubt, but it _is_ generous and elevated and -inspiring. Granted the premises of government by dreams, it is a much -better dream than any which flames in the weak brains of the miners at -Fourmies or in the dwarfed skulls of the Berlin slums. And the Germany -which, under the impulse of a chivalrous and ardent young leader, finds -itself thrilled now by this apocalyptic picture of ideals realized, -and of government by the best that is in men instead of the worst, is -certainly a much pleasanter subject for contemplation than that recent -Germany which, under Bismarck, sneered at every spiritualizing ambition -or thought, and roughly thrust its visionaries into prison or exile. - -The chronological record of what remained of 1890 is meagre enough. -Caprivi’s first quarter in office was rendered brilliant by the bargain -which gave Heligoland to Germany, and discussion over this notable -piece of fortune was prolonged until the idleness of the summer solstice -withdrew men’s minds from politics. William made visits to Scandinavia, -first of all, and then to the south shore of England, to Russia, and to -Austria. In November the excitement over Dr. Koch’s alleged specific for -tuberculosis was promptly reflected by the Emperor’s interest. He gave -personal audience to the eminent microscopist, saying that he felt it -his duty to buy the wonderful invention and confer the benefit of it -freely upon not only his own people but the world at large. A fortnight -later he bestowed upon Dr. Koch the order of the Red Eagle of the first -class--a novel innovation upon the rule that there must be regular -progression in the inferior degrees of the order. - -In the same month William accepted the resignation of Court Chaplain -Stoecker, and met Dr. Windhorst in conversation for the first time. The -two events are bracketed thus because they have an interesting bearing -upon the altered state of the religious question in Germany. - -The _Kulturkampf_ had already, as we have seen, dwindled greatly under -the parliamentary necessities of Bismarck’s last years in power. But -there had been no reconciliation, and the unjust old quarrel still drew -a malignant gash of division through the political and social relations -of the German people. Anti-Semitism in the same way lingered on, -powerless for much overt mischief, but serving to keep alive the -miserable race dissensions which have wrought such harm in Germany, and -lending the apparent sanction of the Court to Berlin’s, social ostracism -of the Jews. William’s broadening perceptions grasped now the necessity -of putting an end to both these survivals of intolerance. The blatant -Stoecker was given the hint to resign and an enlightened clergyman was -installed in his place. At a Parliamentary dinner, given by Caprivi -on November 25th, to which, according to the new order of things, the -leaders in opposition were invited quite as freely as supporters of -the Ministry, the Emperor met Dr. Windhorst, the venerable chief of -the Ultramontane party. All present noted the exceptional courtesy and -attention which William paid to “the Pearl of Meppen,” and construed it -to signify that the days of anti-Catholic bias were dead and gone. This -judgment has been so far justified by events that, when Dr. Windhorst -died in the succeeding March, it was said of him that of all his aims he -left only the readmission of the Jesuits unaccomplished. - -William’s speeches during the year marked a distinct advance in the art -of oratory, and gave fewer evidences of loose and random thinking after -he rose to his feet than were offered by his earlier harangues. At the -swearing-in of the recruits for the Berlin garrison, on November 20th, -he delivered a curiously theological address, saying that though the -situation abroad was peaceful enough, the soldiers must bear their share -with other honest Germans in combating an internal foe, who was only to -be overcome by the aid of Christianity. No one could be a good soldier -without being a good Christian, and therefore the recruits who took an -oath of allegiance to their earthly master, should even more resolve to -be true to their heavenly Lord and Saviour. - -Ten days later William made a speech of a notably different sort in -front of the statue of the Great Elector, the 250th anniversary of whose -accession to the throne of Brandenburg fell upon the 1st of December. -Reference has heretofore been made to the powerful effect produced -upon the young man’s mind by reading the story of this ancestor, in -preparation for this speech. There was nothing at all in it about -loyalty to celestial sovereignties, but it bristled with fervent -eulogies of the fighting Hohenzollerns, and was filled with military -similes and phraseology. It contained as well the veiled comparison -between Schwarzenberg and Bismarck which has been spoken of elsewhere. - -Within the week the Kaiser delivered another speech, much longer than -the other, and of vastly closer human interest. It had evidently been -thought out with great care, and may unquestionably be described as the -most important public deliverance of his reign. When he ascended the -throne no one on earth would have hazarded the guess that, at the -expiration of three years, William’s principal speech would remain one -upon the subject of middle education! - -The occasion was a special conference convened by him to discuss -educational reform in Prussia, and the gathering included not only the -most distinguished professors and specialists within the kingdom, but -representative men from various other German states. A list of the -members would present to the reader the names of half the living Germans -who are illustrious in literature and the sciences. The session was -opened by the Emperor as presiding officer at Berlin, on December 4th. - -It was wholly characteristic of the young man that, having tabled -a series of inquiries upon the subject, he should start off with a -comprehensive and sustained attack upon the whole _gymnasium_, or -higher public school, system of the country. The Conference, having been -summoned to examine the possibility of any further improvement upon -this system, heard with astonishment its imperial chairman open the -proceedings by roundly assailing everything connected with, and typical -of, the entire institution. - -The importance of the speech can best be grasped by keeping in mind the -unique reputation which the Prussian school system has for years enjoyed -in the eyes of the world. Its praises have been the burden of whole -libraries of books. The amazing succession of victories on the fields of -1870-71 which rendered the Franco-Prussian War so pitifully one-sided -a conflict, have been over and over again ascribed to the superior -education of the German _gymnasia_ even more than to the needle-gun--and -this too by French writers among the rest. The Germans are justifiably -proud of their wonderful army, but it is probable that a year ago -they had an even loftier pride in their schools. The teachers are in -themselves an army, and have traditionally exerted an influence, and -commanded a measure of public deference, which the pedagogues of other -lands know nothing about. It required, therefore, an abnormal degree of -moral courage for even an Emperor to stand up in cold blood and make an -attack upon the sacred institution of the _gymnasium_. It is even more -remarkable that what the young man had to say was so fresh and strong -and nervously to the point, that it carried conviction to the minds of a -great majority of the scholastic greybeards who heard it. - -He began by saying that the _gymnasia_ (answering roughly to the Latin -schools of England and the grammar-schools or academies of America) had -in their time done good service, but no longer answered the requirements -of the nation or the necessities of the time. They produced crammed -minds, not virile men; wasting on musty Latin and general classical lore -the time which should be devoted to inculcating a knowledge of German -language and history--knowledge which was of infinitely more value to a -German than all the chronicles of an alien antiquity combined. Had -these schools done anything to combat the follies and chimeras of Social -Democracy? Alas! the answer must be something worse than a negative--and -tell not alone of an urgent duty left undone, but of evil wrought on the -other side. He himself had sat on the various forms of a _gymnasium_ -at Cassel--a very fair sample of that whole class of schools--and he -therefore knew all about their ways and methods, and the sooner these -were mended the better it would be for every one. - -It was undoubtedly true, William went on to admit, that in 1864, 1866, -and 1870 the Prussian teachers’ work showed to advantage. They had -in those past years done a good deal to inculcate, and thus help to -fruition, the idea of national unity--and it was safe to say that during -that period every one who completed his _gymnasium_ course went away -after the final examination convinced that the German Empire should be -reestablished, and crowned by the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine. But -with 1871 this practical process of education came abruptly to an end, -although as a matter of fact there was more than ever a need of teaching -young Germans the importance of preserving their Empire and its -political system intact. The consequence was that certain malignant -forces had grown up and developed to a threatening degree, and for this -the schools were clearly to blame. - -Since 1870, he proceeded, there had been in German education a veritable -reign of the philologists. They had been sitting there enthroned in -the _gymnasia_, devoting all their attention to stuffing their pupils’ -skulls with mere book-learning, without even a thought of striving to -form their characters aright, or training them for the real needs and -trials of practical life. This evil had gone so far that it could go no -farther. He knew that it was the custom to describe him as a fanatical -foe to the _gymnasium_ system. This was not true; only he had an open -eye for its defects as well as its merits--of which, unfortunately, -there seemed a heavy preponderance of the former. - -Chief among these defects, to his mind, was a preposterous partiality -for the classics. He submitted to his hearers, as patriots no less than -professors, that the basis of this public school education should be -German, and the aim kept always in view should be to turn out young -Germans, not young Greeks and Romans. There must be an end to this -folly. They must courageously break away from the mediaeval and monkish -habit of mumbling over much Latin and some Greek, and take to the German -language as the basis of their teaching. This remark applied also -to history. Thoroughness in German history, both authenticated and -legendary, and in its geographical and ethnological connections, should -be first of all insisted upon. It was only when, they were wholly -familiar with the ins and outs of their own house that they could afford -the time to moon about in a museum. - -“When I was at school at Cassel,” said William, “the Great Elector, for -instance, was to me only a nebulous personage. As for the Seven Years’ -War, it lay outside my region of study altogether, and for me history -ended with the French Revolution at the close of the last century. The -Liberation Wars, all-important as they are for the young German, -were not even mentioned, and it was only, thank God! by means of -supplementary and most valuable lectures from my private tutor, Dr. -Hinzpeter, whom I rejoice now to see before me, that I got to know -anything at all about modern history. How is it that so many of our -young Germans are seduced from the path of political virtue? How is it -that we have so many muddleheaded would-be world-improvers amongst us? - -“How is it that we all the time hear so much nagging at our own -government and so much praise of every other government under the sun? -The answer is very easy. It is due to the simple ignorance of all -these professional reformers and renovators as to the genesis of modern -Germany. They were not taught, the boys of to-day are not taught, to -comprehend at all the transition period between the French Revolution -and our own time, by the light of which alone can our present questions -be understood!” - -“Not only would the _gymnasia_ have to mend their methods,” he continued, -both as to matter taught and the method of teaching it, but they must -also reduce the time burden under which they now crush their pupils. It -was cruel and inhuman to compel boys to work so hard at their books that -they had no leisure for healthful recreation, and the necessary physical -training and development of the body. If he himself, while at Cassel, -had not had special opportunities for riding to and fro, and looking -about him a little, he would never have got to know at all what the -outside world was like. It was this barbarous one-sided and eternal -cramming which had already made the nation suffer from a plethora of -learned and so-called educated people, the number of whom was now more -than the people themselves could bear, or the Empire either. So true -it was what Bismarck had once said about all this “proletariat of -pass-men”--this army of what were called hunger candidates, and of -journalists who were also for the most part unsuccessful graduates of -the _gymnasia_, was here on their hands, forming a class truly dangerous -to society! - -The speech contained a great many practical and even technical -references to bad ventilation, the curse of near-sightedness, and other -details which need no mention here, but which indicated deep interest -in, and a very comprehensive grasp of, the entire subject. At the close -of the Conference, on December 17th, he made another address, from which -we may cull a paragraph as a peroration to this whole curious imperial -deliverance upon education. After an apology for having in his previous -remarks neglected any reference to religion--upon which his profound -belief that his duty as King was to foster religious sentiments and -a Christian spirit was as clearly visible to the German people as the -noonday light itself--he struck this true _fin de siécle_ note as the -key to his attitude on the entire subject: - -“We find ourselves now, after marking step so long, upon the order of a -general forward movement into the new century. My ancestors, with their -fingers upon the pulse of time, have ever kept an alert and intelligent -lookout upon the promises and threats of the future, and thus have -throughout been able to maintain themselves at the head of whatever -movement they resolved to embrace and direct. I believe that I have -mastered the aims and impulses of this new spirit which thrills the -expiring century. As on the question of social reform, so in this grave -matter of the teaching of our young, I have decided to lead, rather than -oppose, the working out of these new and progressive tendencies. The -maxim of my family, ‘To every one his due,’ has for its true meaning ‘To -each what is properly his,’ which is a very different thing from ‘_The -same to all._’ Thus interpreted the motto governs our position here, and -the decisions we have arrived at. Hitherto our course in education has -been from Thermopylae, by Cannæ, up to Rossbach and Vionville. It is my -desire to lead the youth of Germany from the starting-point of Sedan and -Gravelotte, by Leuthen and Rossbach, back to Mantinea and Thermopylae, -which I hold to be the more excellent way.” - -The effect of this pronouncement upon the German public was electrical. -For years there had been growing up in the popular mind a notion that -something was wrong with the _gymnasium_, but no one had had the courage -to define, much less proclaim, what the real trouble was. Parents had -seen their sons condemned to thirty hours per week in the _gymnasium_ -(involving an even greater study time outside), and vaguely marvelled -that of these thirty hours ten should be given to Latin and six to -Greek, whereas mathematics claimed only four, geography and history -combined got only three, German and French had but two each, natural -science fluctuated between two and one, and English did not appear at -all. * But though there was everywhere a nebulous suspicion and dislike -of the system, it enjoyed the sacred immunity from attack of a fetich. -So wonderful a thing was it held to be, in all printed and spoken -speech, that people hardly dared harbour their own skeptical thoughts -about it. But when the young Kaiser bluntly announced his conviction -that it was all stupid and vicious and harmful, and pledged himself with -boldness to sweep away the classical rubbish and put practical modern -education in its place, the parents of Germany, to use Herr von Bunsen’s -phrase, were simply enchanted. - - *See the interesting tabular statement in S. Baring-Gould’s - “Germany Past and Present,” p. 181. London, 1881. - -During the five months which have elapsed no miracle has been wrought; -the character of the _gymnasia_ has not been changed by magic. But it is -perfectly understood by everybody that the Kaiser intends having his own -way, and being as good as his word. Important steps have already been -taken to enforce his views upon the system--notably by a change in the -Ministry of Instruction. - -Dr. Gustav von Gossler had held the portfolio for ten years, and was so -entrenched in the liking of the great body of professors and teachers -that he assumed his position to be perfectly secure. When, in the summer -of 1889, the young Emperor despatched to him a long memorandum on the -reforms necessary in the higher schools of Prussia, he received it -submissively, even sympathetically, put it in a pigeon-hole, and went -on in the same old dry-as-dust classical rut. William said nothing more, -but eighteen months later, when he summoned the Educational Conference, -he simultaneously published the text of the memorandum of the previous -year. Even then Gossler seems to have suspected no danger, and made -an official speech at the opening of the session full of amiable -and confident commonplaces. On the following New Year’s Day, -however--January 1st, of the present year--a peremptory warning came to -him in the form of a gift from the palace. It was a handsomely framed -photograph of William II, and above the dashing signature were written -the significant words, “_Sic volo, sic jubeo_.” It is not strange that -shortly thereafter the retirement of von Gossler was announced. - -His successor, Count Zedlitz-Trutschler, although beginning his career -in the army, long ago revealed abilities which suggested his being -drafted off into civil work. He has sat in the Reichstag as a Free -Conservative, has been Governor of Silesia, and is both an excellent -speaker and a man of great tact and resource. Among the reforms which he -has already seen his way to enforce is one by which the students of the -_gymnasia_ report the number of hours out of school in which they are -compelled to study to keep up with their lessons--these reports serving -as a basis for the monthly rearrangement of tasks in such a way as to -leave enough time for recreation. The study of German and other modern -tongues has also largely displaced the classical curriculum in the -three lower classes of the _gymnasia_. Count Zedlitz is the Minister, -moreover, having to deal with ecclesiastical affairs, and his sympathies -are all upon the side of toleration and of a good understanding with the -Vatican. - -On this same New Year’s Day William sent a photograph also to the -venerable Postmaster-General, Herr von Stephan, bearing a written legend -not less characteristic than the other. It ran thus: “Intercommunication -is the sign under which the world stands at the close of the present -century. The barriers separating nations are thereby overthrown, and new -relations established between them.” Upon the sentiment thus expressed -much of great importance to Germany and to Europe depends. - -Brief as has been the career of the present German Empire among nations, -its history already covers one very remarkable and complete _volte face_ -on economic subjects, and the beginnings of what promises to be a second -and almost as sweeping change. Up to 1876, with Delbrück as President of -the Chancellery and Camphausen as Minister of Finance, Germany stood -for as liberal a spirit of international trade relations as at least -any other nation on the Continent. But in that year Bismarck, by a -combination of the various Conservative factions which leaned toward -high tariffs, inaugurated a Protectionist policy which forced these -Ministers out and ranged the German Empire definitely on the other side -of the economic wall. To the end of Bismarck’s rule, Germany steadily -drifted away from Free Trade and toward the ideals of Russia, Thibet, -and the Republican party in the United States. But even before -Bismarck’s fall it became apparent that the young Emperor took broader -views on this subject than his Chancellor, and during the past year -several important steps have been taken toward bringing Germany forward -once more into line with modern conceptions of emancipated trade. A -liberal Treaty of Commerce has been signed with Austro-Hungary--the -precursor, it is believed, of others with countries now committed to -stupid and injurious tariff wars, while at home no secret is made of the -ministerial intention to in time reduce duties on cereals, lumber, and -other necessaries, and generally pursue a tariff reform policy. The -Reichstag has during the year passed a bill which, beginning in August -of 1892, spreads over five years the extinction of the sugar bounties, -another great bulwark of the rich protectionist ring. An attack upon the -spirit bounties is expected next, while the Upper House of the Prussian -Diet has just passed the new Graded Income Tax Bill which is to pave the -way to a return from tariff to direct taxation. - -The inspiring source of these reforms is Dr. Miquel, whose rise to -imperial favour during the labour crisis has been noted, and who -succeeded von Scholz as Minister of Finance in June of 1890. He -furnishes still another illustration of the debt which German public -life owes to the absorption, two centuries ago, of that leaven of -Huguenot blood to which reference has heretofore been made--and which -has long played in Prussia as disproportionately important a part as the -remaining Protestant strain has in the politics of France. Herr Miquel -looks like a Frenchman, and his manner, at once polished, genial, and -grave, is that of a statesman reared on the Seine rather than the Vecht. - -In one sense he is scarcely a new man, since he sat in the Prussian -Parliament before the days of the Empire, and was years ago regarded as -dividing with Bennigsen the leadership of the National Liberal party. -He is in his sixty-third year, and might long since have been a Minister -had he not felt it incompatible with his self-respect to take a portfolio -under Bismarck’s whimsical and arrogant mastership. In this present -period of uncertainty in German politics, filled as it is with warring -rumours of impending reconciliations and hints of even more deeply -embittered quarrels, prophecy is forbidden, but no one on either side -attempts a forecast of the future which does not assign to Miquel a -predominant part. - -His administrative abilities are of a very high order, and he combines -with them much breadth of vision and great personal authority. The -reliance placed upon him by the Emperor has been a subject of comment, -almost from the first meeting of the two men, and German public opinion -gives him no rival in influence over the imperial mind. It was at the -dinner-table of this Minister last February that William is said to have -replied to a long argument by Baron Kardorff in favour of bimetallism: -“Personally I am a gold man, and for the rest I leave everything to -Miquel.” - -With the impending retirement of von Maybach, Minister of Public Works -and Railways, von Boetticher will be the only remaining Minister of -eleven who held portfolios when William I died in March, 1888. It seems -probable that the present year will outlive even this exception. The -change in governmental spirit and methods of which Berlin is more -and more conscious, is not wholly a matter of new men. The weight of -militarism is being lifted. Generals no longer play the part they did in -purely civil affairs. Count Waldersee’s retirement from his great -post as Chief of the General Staff is popularly ascribed to his having -attempted to interfere with the amount and distribution of the military -budget. Five years ago such an interference would have seemed to -everybody the most natural thing in the world. The Emperor, too, grows -less fond of obtruding the martial side of his training and temperament. -From a beginning in which he seemed to think that Germany existed -principally for the purpose of supporting an army, he has grown to see -the true proportion of things and to give military matters hardly more -than their legitimate share of his attention. The death of Moltke has -removed the last great soldier who could speak authoritatively for the -army in the Reichstag. In that sense at least he has left no heir. - -In the more troubled domain of foreign affairs, the year without -Bismarck has been marked by fewer visible changes. We are well along -into “a year without Crispi,” also, but the Triple Alliance, if less -demonstrative in its professions of mutual affection and pride than -formerly, seems no whit diminished in substantial unity. At the moment, -peace appears to be as secure as it has been during any year since -1880--which is another way of saying that the weight of force and -determination is still on the side of the Triple Alliance. - -There has been during the twelvemonth only one sensational incident to -mar the polite, business-like relations which Caprivi maintains with the -nations of the earth. The unfortunate incidents attending the visit in -February of the Empress Frederic to Paris, are too fresh in the public -memory to call for recapitulation here. It seems fair to say that it is -not easy to imagine so pacific and sensible an ending to such a stormy -episode having been arrived at in the days of Bismarck. The young -Kaiser, whom Europe thought of as a firebrand when he ascended the -throne, kept his temper, or at least prevented its making a mark upon -the policy of his government, in a striking manner. He had just gone out -of his way to conciliate French feeling by writing a graceful message -of condolence upon the death of Meissonier. The foolish insults to his -mother, with which this act of courtesy was answered by the Parisian -rabble, failed to provoke any retort in kind. Indeed, when it was -represented to him that the increased rigour of passport regulations in -Alsace-Lorraine was being construed as a reprisal, he issued orders to -modify this rigour. - -With this exhibition of judicious restraint, which rises to the full -measure of the vast responsibilities and anxious necessities of his -position, our chronological record of William’s three-years’ reign may -be fittingly brought to a close. The added narrative which is held in -store for us by the future may be tempestuous and discoloured by fire -and blood; far better, it may be a gentle story of increasing wisdom, of -good deeds done and peace made a natural state instead of an emergency -in the minds of men. But whichever betides, we have seen enough to feel -that it will be the chronicle of a real man, active, self-centred, eager -to achieve and resolute to act, of high temper and great ambitions, -and who has been given such a chance by the fates to help or hurt his -fellow-mortals as perhaps no other young man ever had. - -In a concluding chapter some notice may properly be taken of the -personal attributes of William, and of his daily walk and talk as a -human being as well as a Kaiser. - - - - -CHAPTER XII.--PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS - -In the matter of personal appearance there are two quite distinct and -different Williams. Those who see the young German Emperor on a State -occasion think of him as almost a tall man, with a stern, thoughtful -face and the most distinguished bearing of any sovereign in Europe. He -holds himself with arrow-like straightness, bears his uniform or robes -with proud grace, and draws his features into a kind of mask of -imperial dignity and reserved wisdom and strength very impressive to -the beholder. It is with what may be called this official countenance of -William’s that the general public is chiefly familiar, for he assumes -it in front of the photographer’s camera, just as he does on parade, at -formal gatherings, and even in his carriage when he drives through the -streets. - -There is nothing to cavil at in this. One of the most important -functions of an Emperor must surely be to look like an Emperor. - -But in private life, when the absence of ceremonial and the presence of -none but friends permit him to unbend, we see quite another William. -He does not now give, the impression of being a tall man, and his face -wears a softened and kindly expression prone to break into an extremely -sweet and winning smile. When this smiling mood is upon him he looks -curiously like his uncle, the Duke of Connaught, although at other times -the resemblance is not apparent. As a boy he was very white-skinned, -with pale flaxen hair. Years of military outdoor life burned his face to -a tawny brown, through which of late an unhealthy pallor, the product -of overwork and sleeplessness, at times shows itself. His hair is of -average darkness, but his small and habitually curled moustache is of a -light yellowish colour. - -An observer who studied him closely during a whole day when he visited -Russia three years ago describes him at the first morning review -of troops as carrying himself almost pompously erect, and wearing -a countenance of such gloomy severity that everybody was afraid to -approach him, so that the officers who saw him for the first time -jokingly whispered to one another that a new William the Taciturn had -come into being. But in the afternoon, when the Czarina presided over -a little garden party, limited almost to the circle of royalty, William -appeared in a straw hat and jaunty holiday costume, smoked cigarettes -continuously, and laughed and chatted with everybody as gaily and -affably as any little bank bookkeeper snatching an unaccustomed day in -the country. - -The dominant feature of his make-up is a restless and tireless physical -energy. In this he is perhaps more English than German. The insular -tendency of his out-of-door tastes is very marked. Probably there is no -gentleman on the Continent who keeps a keener or more interested watch -upon the details of English sport, year by year, than William does. -Oxford will not soon forget his characteristic telegram to Max Müller, -recently, congratulating the University crew upon their victory in the -annual race, and every British yachtsman looks forward to this season’s -regatta at Cowes with added interest, from the fact that the Emperor -intends personally competing with his newly-purchased yacht. - -William rides like an Englishman--which is another way of saying that -he cuts a better figure in the saddle than most of the other Hohenzollerns, notoriously bad horsemen as a rule, have done. He has all the -British passion for the sea and matters maritime. In his speech to the -officers of the English fleet at Athens he said that his interest in -their navy dated from the earliest days of his boyhood, when he played -about Portsmouth dockyard and gained impressions of the vastness and -splendour of British shipping which had vividly coloured his imagination -for all time. No other German ruler has ever given so much thought -to naval matters, and it is his openly-expressed ambition to give the -Empire during his reign a fighting fleet which shall rank among the -great navies of the world. During the debates in the Reichstag last -March on the excessive naval estimates, he sent to the chairman of that -special budget committee a copy of an old painting representing the -fleet of the Great Elector, with footnotes in his own imperial hand -giving the names and armaments of the various vessels, and bearing -the inscription: “To Herr von Koscielski, in remembrance of his manly -advocacy of my navy, from his grateful Emperor and King.” - -[Illustration: 0230] - -William’s love of exercise for its own sake is truly English. He fences -admirably, is a skilful boatman, swims and bowls well and with zest, and -delights in mountain climbing. No other Prussian Prince has ever been so -fond of shooting. Hohenzollern notions of this particular sport have for -generations been a matter for derision among Englishmen. Even Carlyle, -who will hardly be described as a sportsman, was alive to the grotesque -features of the _Parforce Fagd_, that curious institution in the Potsdam -Green Forest which owes its origin to Frederic William I. The _Saugarten_ -is still there, and young boars, bred in captivity and bereft of their -tusks at a tender age, are still released from their pens when the first -frosts of autumn fall, and after a start of a few minutes are chased -by mounted and gaily caparisoned parties of huntsmen--for all the world -like the tame lion hunts of the Sardanapalian decadence pictured for -us by the Assyrian palace friezes. But William has never shown much -admiration for this pet diversion of the Potsdam officers. His own -tastes are for the most laborious and difficult forms of woodland sport, -and he is an exceptionally good shot. - -What renders all this the more remarkable is the fact that his left arm -is practically paralyzed. He has trained himself to hold the rein with -it when he rides, but that is the sum of its usefulness. This defect -dates from the occasion of his birth, and is ascribed to the ignorance -or ineptitude of a physician. The arm is four inches shorter than its -fellow, and has a malformed hand with only rudimentary fingers. The arm -is so wholly limp that William has to lift its hand to even place it -on the hilt of his sword with his right hand. It is in this posture, or -else in the breast of his coat, that he customarily carries it when -out of the saddle. All his photographs show it thus disposed of. At the -table he has a combined knife and fork, which slide into each other. He -uses this with much dexterity, first to cut up his meat and then to eat -it, all of course with one hand. - -To have become a skilled marksman under such a weighty disadvantage -indicates great patience and determination. William uses a very light -English gun, having abandoned in despair the attempt to get any made -to his liking in Germany, and carries it on his shoulder with the stock -behind him. At the proper moment he brings the weapon forward by a -movement of his right arm, with incredible swiftness and deadly accuracy -of aim. - -Of much graver importance, of course, is the internal inflammation of -the ear, formerly complicated at times with an acute earache, with which -he has now been afflicted for a number of years. Just what the affection -is no one has yet been able to determine. It grows worse in cold and -wet weather, and that is about all that is known of it. The physicians -disagree as to its character. William himself, though occasionally -suffering grievously from it, has never been alarmed about it, and -really believes it to be a local ailment. Its existence naturally enough -suffices to create a certain uneasiness in the minds of his friends, -and of Germans generally, and serves as the fruitful source of alarming -rumours by which, from time to time, the virtue of Continental bourses -is systematically assailed. But no responsible professional man seems -to regard it as necessarily dangerous. This year, although the Emperor’s -appearance shows evident signs of the wear and strain of his great -burdens upon his strength and spirits, this particular affection is said -to be less troublesome than usual. - -Undoubtedly, however, this annoying and wearying burden of the flesh -has a great deal to do with William’s disposition towards nervous -excitability and restlessness. A man with the earache cannot be expected -to hold calm mastery over all his moods. It is a reasonable assumption, -too, that to this affliction is in some measure due his phenomenal and -unseasonable physical activity. Sometimes it happens that he is unable -to sleep at all, and he habitually keeps notebooks and pencils within -reach of his bedside, upon which to work until the demon of insomnia is -exorcised. Upon occasion, for distraction, he routs out the garrison of -Berlin, or some regiment of it, before daybreak. In any case he rises at -five. - -Both at home and when abroad the amount of labour he gets through in a -day is almost without parallel. It is a commonplace experience for him -to do four hours’ work in his Berlin study in the early morning; then -take a train to Potsdam and spend the remainder of the forenoon in -reviewing troops; then trot back in the saddle with his staff over the -distance of eighteen miles; devote the afternoon to the transaction of -business with his Ministers and officials; receive and return the calls -of two or three visiting royal personages; then dine somewhere where -a speech must be made, and get back to the palace for more work before -bedtime. - -In Constantinople and the scarcely less Oriental Athens they still -recall his energetic daily routine with bewildered astonishment. He was -up long before the drowsy muezzins from the minarets summon the faithful -at the hour of prayer--rattling indefatigably about to see all the -sights, reviewing the Sultan’s troops, inspecting all the chief military -establishments, War Ministry, military school, artillery barracks, and -what not besides, asking questions of everybody who had anything to -tell, peering into every nook and cranny with an insatiable curiosity, -working through it all upon notes of instruction and reference to be -forwarded to Berlin every evening, and then sitting up until all the -others were yawning with sleep. - -Of course he could not bear the strain of this constant activity if he -were not endowed with two great gifts--prodigious physical vitality and -imagination. Mere strength alone, mated with dulness of mind, would be -broken down and destroyed by the wear and tear of such a life. William -is, physically and mentally, the heir of the best things which European -royalty has to offer. He inherits the bodily force and resolution of -the Hohenzollerns, the _savoir faire_ and comeliness of the Guelphs, the -intellectual acuteness and philosophical tastes of the Coburgs, and the -romantic mediaeval Ascanien strain which Catherine II took to Russia -and her granddaughter brought back again to Weimar--a leaven half divine -half daemonic, which swings between genius and madness. The product -of these marriages might be expected to be what he is--by far the most -striking personality in the whole gallery of contemporary kings. - -What other dynasty in Western Europe does not envy William his six -handsome, sturdy, and superbly healthy little sons? Seeing them with -their shining, bright-eyed faces and ordinary well-worn clothes, one -cannot but reflect upon the contrast afforded at Vienna, where the great -rival house of Hapsburg is dying miserably out in pallid epileptics and -vicious dullards. - -These six fine boys, the oldest of whom is now in his tenth year, are -reared in the Spartan traditions of the Hohenzollerns. Winter and summer -they are up at six o’clock and into their cold tubs with merciless -punctuality. As a rule they breakfast with their father half an hour -later, and throughout the meal he talks with them alone. They salute -him on entering, and again on leaving, in military fashion; even at this -tender age a considerable portion of their education is upon martial -subjects. The Emperor, in his recent speech at Bonn, indicated an -intention of having the Crown Prince eventually matriculate there, but -for the present, as soon as the lads outgrow their private tutors it -is understood that they are to go to the great cadet school at -Lichterfelde, just outside Berlin. Evidently the _gymnasium_ has no part -in the plans for their education. - -The predominance of the military idea, which envelops even these little -baby princes, is indeed the keynote to every phase of their father’s -character. He is first of all a soldier. He lives a plain and simple -life; the service and routine of his palaces are those of an officer’s -mess. He is a heavy eater, with a preference for homely dishes; he -smokes great numbers of light Dutch cigars which cost about three -halfpence each. He addresses all persons whom he meets in an official -capacity in the terse form and curt, sharp tone of a drill sergeant. -Although in private conversation with friends his voice is soft and -pleasant, all his public speeches are declaimed in a harsh and rattling -voice, with abruptly ended sentences. His relations with other -Germans, from the kings down to the peasants, are, in short, those of a -commanding officer on the parade ground. This attitude does not suggest -tact, or lend itself to roundabout’ methods. The bluntly-expressed -rescripts to the officers of the army which William from time to time -has issued, complaining about the harsh personal treatment of the men, -denouncing gambling and extravagant living, and so on, might easily have -provoked a spirit of discontent in a country less wholly ruled by the -idea of military discipline. - -Naturally enough, his innate liking for display and scenic effects is -strongly coloured by militarism. He cannot see too many uniforms about -him, and he literally inundates Berlin with martial pageants. One might -suppose that the effect of this would be to satiate the Berliners, but -they maintain a most vigorous and unabated interest in seeing the troops -march by, and throng the sidewalks every time as if the spectacle had -all the excitement of novelty. - -In almost every other country the personal tastes or whims of the -sovereign, if he be at all a man of the world, leave a certain mark upon -the every-day dress of the people about him. The Prince of Wales, for -example, during the quarter century in which he has assumed the social -work of his mother’s reign, has made a good many changes in the fashions -of men’s clothes--changes which have been respected in Melbourne and -Washington and Toronto as well as in London. But hardly anybody in -Germany has ever seen the adult William in citizen’s clothes--and -positively no one ever thinks of him save as in uniform. - -As William is a soldier in manners and habits, so his conceptions of -government and of domestic statecraft are largely those which might be -expected in a chief of staff. He addresses his people always as their -commander-in-chief. The starting-point of his resolve to get rid of -Bismarck and bring in new men like Miquel and Caprivi, was his discovery -that the Chancellor and the various political parties and factions -which he alternately bullied and cajoled were really so many impediments -standing between him and his subjects. The Hohenzollern desired to speak -directly to the people, as a general to his army, and he has swept aside -whatever stood in the way. Such a posture does not, at first sight, seem -to promise much for progress and enlightened development, but it must -be remembered that universal service in the army has had the effect of -familiarizing all other Germans with this same point of view, so that -really sovereign and subjects get on much better together than in many -countries nominally more free. - -The difficulties of government in Germany are almost wholly social and -economic. The Prussian artizan, perforce, spends seven years at school -and three years in the army before he seriously takes up his trade -and sets to working for himself. He marries early and has a swarm -of children, and the necessity of toiling to support all these in an -overcrowded and underpaid labour market grinds upon his temper. He -has, to begin with, a racial tendency to think highly of himself and to -criticize other people; he is afforded only too much justification for -his rooted dislike of aristocrats, employers, and rich people generally, -who in Germany are much less generous and considerate than in some other -countries. Thus he is peculiarly open to the arguments and allurements -of the social democratic propaganda. - -The Kaiser’s idea is to meet and counteract this by appealing to -the workman’s military recollections and pride. It is difficult -for outsiders to realize the potency of this appeal. Americans and -Englishmen see the scores of thousands of young Germans who expatriate -themselves to escape military service, and assume, therefore, that it -must be a hateful thing. To those who look forward to it this may be -true. But to the poor German artizan who looks backward upon it this -term of service in the army is apt to seem the pleasantest period of his -life. By comparison with the hardships of his later independent struggle -for existence, he comes to regard this time when he was fed and clothed -and instructed and lodged, and wore a uniform, with affectionate regret. - -William, with what seems a sound instinct, lays great stress upon -keeping alive and strengthening this army spirit. His wish is so to -extend a semi-military organization throughout the social structure that -every German may continue to feel that he belongs to the army. To -this end he encourages the founding in each village of a -_Landwehrbezirksverein_, or military club, where veterans and reservists -are invited to come and read the papers over their beer and pipes, take -charge of anniversary celebrations, promote local shooting festivals, -and keep Social Democrats at a healthful distance. This plan is reported -to be working well in small places, but it has not been thus far of much -service in cities and factory centres, and in Mainz the attempt has just -been abandoned owing to the discovery that all the members had become -Social Democrats. But it is important to notice that since William -has actively interested himself in the condition of these lower -social strata, and sharply rated employers and army officers for harsh -treatment of their men, the tone of the Socialists in the Reichstag -toward him has been quite as civil as that of the other members. - -For a young man descended from such phenomenally thrifty people as -the Hohenzollerns and Wettins have always been, William has remarkably -lavish, not to say prodigal, notions about money. He was left a very -rich man by his father’s death, and a complaisant Reichstag shortly -thereafter largely increased the amount of his civil list, but for -all that prudent Germans shake their heads over the immense schemes -of expenditure to which he is already committed. The outlay upon the -renovation of the Old Schloss in Berlin, entered upon in the first -months of his reign, startled these good souls, but that turned out to -be a mere drop in the bucket. The whole park arrangements at Potsdam -are to be altered, and the unsightly old Dom--or cathedral--facing the -Lustgarten in Berlin, has been torn down to make room for a magnificent -ecclesiastical edifice worthy of the German capital. This means a heavy -bill of expense, and Berliners hear with mingled emotions that their -Royal Opera House is also to come down, to be supplanted by a wonderful -new structure rivalling in dimensions and cost the Grand Opera House in -Paris. - -This last plan reflects the most marked artistic sense discoverable in -William. He is passionately fond of the theatre, and has enlightened -views about its popular usefulness. In decorating the tragedian, Ludwig -Barnay, he has put on record an act by a Prussian King which not even -his grandfather, the old Kaiser, enamoured of all things connected with -the stage as he was, could be brought to contemplate. He delighted in -the company of players to the end of his days, but he always frowned -when the possibility of stars and ribbons was hinted at. William’s -action, therefore, deserves special notice. It must be admitted that his -attitude toward the drama is dictatorial to a degree--very like that -which a general might be assumed to occupy toward a band of mummers -allowed inside the camp to amuse the soldiers; but the German drama is -framed to resist a great deal of pressure to the square inch, and is -indeed rather the better for it. Very comical are the stories told -in Berlin of the way in which William personally superintended the -rehearsals of Wildenbruch’s “The New Lord” last winter, criticizing and -instructing the actors, and rearranging the distribution of the cast to -suit his notions of their several capabilities. The fact that the drama -had for its principal incident the Great Elector’s dismissal of his -father’s Minister, Schwarzenberg, doubtless accounted for much of the -Emperor’s personal solicitude as to its proper presentation. But it is -not in William’s nature to refrain from meddling and dictating about -anything, no matter how trivial, in which his interest is aroused. - -The young Kaiser was never what is called a bookish man, and, as has -been said before, the tremendous pressure of his daily work now leaves -him no time whatever for reading. But he still manages to secure a -certain amount of leisure for association with intimate friends, and -among these are a number of highly-cultured men. He gets from them what -others are obliged to seek in books. His inclinations seem to develop -steadily in the direction of respect for intellectual people and -products. It is a part of the phenomenon of belated growth which we have -traced from his thirtieth birthday; mentally and spiritually cramped up -to that time by the despotic influence of the small Bismarckian clique, -he had still the strength and ability to expand his mind and character -with splendid swiftness when finally the bonds were thrown off. One of -the pleasantest features of the Labour Conference gathering in Berlin -was the kindly and appreciative way in which William gave his chief -attention to the venerable Jules Simon, talked with him intelligently -about his works, and presented him with what of all possible gifts he -would most prize--some of the manuscript French writings of Frederic the -Great. It is more than likely that a twelvemonth before William did not -know anything at all about either Jules Simon or his books. - -His special liking for the scholarly King of Sweden, and his annual -choice of the sombre solitudes of the Norwegian coast for his -summer season of entire rest, are very interesting evidences of -this progressive mental elevation. William has a natural tendency to -deference and a display of youthful humility toward able men much -older than himself, as all who have seen him in the company of his -grandfather, Moltke, Windhorst, or Bismarck must have noted, but his -attraction toward the learned and gentle Scandinavian monarch is hardly -to be put down to that score. Most other princes of William’s age, or -even much older, devote as little time to King Oscar as politeness will -permit, and for choice prefer to spend their holidays at Homburg or -Monte Carlo. - -No gambling Casino or mere frivolous watering-place so much as knows -William by sight. He detests the whole spirit of these princely resorts. -He drinks with tolerable freedom at dinner, and is neither a prig nor -a prude. But he is distinctly a moral man. People who are close to -him aver that he is sincerely religious, and that by no means in a -latitudinarian sense. So far as his actions have thrown light on this -subject they have indicated a spirit of theological tolerance. In the -fourth month of his reign, when the Senior Council of the Evangelical -Lutheran Church sought to overturn the election of the heterodox -Professor Harnack to the chair of Church History and Dogma at Berlin, -William emphatically tossed aside their protest and confirmed the -selection of the University. At about the same time he delivered a -public rebuke to certain enthusiasts who sought to commit him to an -approval of Jew-baiting, and since then, as we have seen, Dr. Stocker -has gone for good. Last winter the Emperor gave a most interesting -and characteristic proof of this broad-minded spirit. Two earnestly -religious young Germans named Haase and May, belonging to a sect called -the New Church, the basis of which is non-resistance, refused on moral -grounds to do military service. Their persistence naturally brought them -into collision with the courts, and they were sentenced to six weeks’ -imprisonment. William heard of the case, and, while it would not do to -remit the punishment, he issued directions that their stay in prison -should be made as comfortable as possible. Upon their release he -personally gave the money to pay their passage to America, whither they -sailed with the intention of becoming missionaries. - -***** - -When William ascended the German throne, under such unpleasant and -prejudicial conditions, the world thought of him as an ill-conditioned -and wildly-reckless young swashbuckler, whose head would speedily be -turned by the intoxicating sense of power, and who would make haste to -plunge Europe into war. - -Three years of authority have worked such a change in him--or, perhaps -better, have brought to the top so many strong and admirable -qualities in him which had been dwarfed and obscured by adverse -circumstances--that the world has insensibly come to alter its opinion -of his character. We think of him no longer as a firebrand. He preserves -enough of the eccentricities of a nervous and impetuous individuality, -it is true, to still impart to public scrutiny of his words and deeds -an element of apprehension. One still instinctively reads the reports -of his speeches with an eye cast ahead for wild or thoughtless -utterances--and only too often, as in the case of the “salamander” - remarks to the Borussian Students’ Corps at Bonn the other day, finds -what was anticipated. But even in this matter of an over-hasty and -unrestrained tongue three years have wrought an important improvement, -and in almost all other respects he is unquestionably a better man and -a better ruler than the world took it for granted he would be. Doubtless -as time goes on we shall come to regard him in a still more altered -light. - -At present what can be fairly said is that he stands out with clearness -from among European sovereigns as a living and genuine personality--a -young man of imagination, of great activity and executive ability, -taking gravely serious views of his duties and responsibilities, keenly -anxious to do what he believes to be right, and increasingly disposed to -look to wise and elevated sources of judgment for suggestions as to what -is right. - - -THE END. - - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Young Emperor, William II of -Germany, by Harold Frederic - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNG EMPEROR *** - -***** This file should be named 54989-0.txt or 54989-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/4/9/8/54989/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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