The German Emperor as Shown in His Public Utterances

vents with high unconcern. The great sceptic had been born in 1823; he was therefore sixty-five at the time of the accession of William II, and his declinin

es of Europe. One day he receives the Czar at Berlin and proclaims peace to the world. A few weeks later he visits the Sultan at Constantinople, and shortly thereafter he announces to his loyal Brandenburgers that he will lead them on to greater things. What did he mean? Now he is a soldier, jesting with his officers; and, with the rising of another sun, in workman's garb, with the axe upon his shoulder, he goes forth as woodman or laborer on his own estates. At home he was regarded as Benjamin Constant regarded Madame

e confidence in himself and with a determined application he was making Germany the greatest state in Europe. To those who, unlike Renan, did not have the misfortune to have been born too soon to be his later contemporaries, the riddle seemed to be solving itself to the greater good of humanity. The Emperor's army, so he tells us himself, is

tier to frontier, now planning an invasion of England, now supervising the readministration of Belgian industries, and now directing a battle in Poland. Surely such a destiny,

e question if not the answer clear. Looking forward dispassionately twenty-three years ago that Portuguese student prophesied that this could not last, that there would be war; and in

alone it is (not to his ministers, to his council, or to his parliament) that God, the God of the Hohenzollerns, imparts his transcendental inspiration. He must therefore be infallible and invincible. At the first disaster-w

'iron dice' to which the now-forgotten Bismarck once alluded. If he win he may have within and without the frontiers altars such as were raised to Augustus; sho

may God make them slow and lengthy!) this youth, ardent, pleasing, fertile in imagination, of sincere, perhaps heroic, soul, may be sitting in calm majesty in his Berlin Schlos

ens and Sparta, had said: "They that have died are not sick, nor do they possess any evil things." If this be true, quite possibly, then, the world was kinder to this aged Frenchman than he shall ever know. For the disasters which were to follow the rising star of

itical life. It is the empire and not the Constitution that is holy. Struggles for personal liberty find little place in the history of Prussia. They have no Cromwell, no Washington, no Robespierre, and, significantly too, they have had in times past no Ravaillac and no Guiteau. There, still, a certain majesty doth hedge abo

five hundred years of imprisonment for lèse-majesté. Within eight months the authorities dissolved two hundred and twenty-two workingmen's unions, suppressed one hundred and twenty-seven periodical and two hundred and seventy-eight other publications, and innumerable bona-fide co-operative societies were compelled by the police to close their doors without trial and with no possibility of appeal. With equal despatch numerous Social Democrats were expelled from Germany on a few d

1 1893 1

895,000 1,210,000 1,806

,948,000 2,102,000

,618,000 1,920,000

,000 312,000 1,787,0

ar if defensive (in German eyes the present is a defensive war), can make peace as well as enter into treaties with other nations, and appoint and receive ambassadors. When treaties are related to matters regulated by imperial legislation, and when war is not merely defensiv

nsulting the people, we may gather from the fact that the Great Chancellor frequently debated the question of limiting the suffrage. "The blind H?dhur[1] [the German elector] does not know how to manipulate in his coars

?dhur was the powerful b

governing body. It has the right to refuse a bill presented by the government, but if it does so it may be summarily dismissed, as has happened several time

ust beyond the nose has something to do, no doubt, with the lack of unanimity which exists. The diverse elements debate with one another and waste their energy in rebukes and recriminations which lead nowhere and result in nothing. I have listened to many debates in the Reichstag where the

elf-government to the German people, but to guarantee and maintain the supremacy of Prussia. Whether or not this is a possible view, it is, in any case, one occasionally to be found implied in the speeches of the Emperor, and it came to open expression

ht and coming from a competent source, that annexation to Prussia is the heaviest punishment that one can threaten to impose upo

priate (as, for instance, the famous K?nigsberg speech, August 25, 1910) the Emperor makes no mention whatever of the Constitution

of Brandenburg, of which they became some centuries ago the margraves and electors. In 1300 Prussia was a wilderness inhabited by savages who were ruthlessly massacred by the Teutonic knights. It was lo

purposes, it was not until 1273 that a count of Hohenzollern first came into prominence, when, after a fortunate marriage, he became burgrave of Nuremberg and prince of the Holy Roman Empire. With the exception of Frederick William II,

he largely increased his fortune thereby. He seems not to have been content with mere promises, and it is a matter of record that Sigismund pledged to him certain districts in Hungary as security for 40,000 gulden. As Frederick was to lay the foundation

to them. In 1410 Sigismund eagerly desired to be elected Emperor of Germany. He entrusted the management of what might quite properly be called his "campaign" to Frederick of Hohenzollern. Jobst of Moravia, who, as we have seen, now had claims to Brandenburg was a rival candidate. Sigismund, without deigning to make repayment, coolly declared that the transaction with Jobst concerning Brandenburg was null and void and instructed Frederick to cast the vote for the mark. To this vote Frederick clearly (if anything in these complicated proceedin

e-elected and was finally acknowledged as Emperor. If the times were bad, Sigismund and Jobst were no better than their times. It was this same Sigismund who, afte

hat no bill of particulars specifying the uses of this fund is now available, if any was ever rendered. That Frederick, however, had not served Sigismund "pour l'amour de Dieu" is plain from the fact that he again

hing quite incidental, it is altogether similar to the forms in which other mortgages were couched in those days. That this was so is further evidenced by the fact that the Brandenburg cities looked upon Frederick as the holder of a mortgage and did homage to him "zu seinem Gelde"-"for his money"; that is, they recognized that they were bound to him only until he should be paid. The nobles did not do homage to him at all. After "the rain of margraves" of the previous decades, it is not strange that they should have been slow to recognize their latest overlord. Emperor William II is, therefore, quite right when he describes the mark of May, 1412, as devastated, unruly, and altogether unpromising. It could hardl

ft his southern home for the mark out of heed for a divine call, as Emperor William in his speech of February 3, 1899, tells us that he did, is historically, like Laplace's God, a useless hypothesis. Self-interest, for wh

out of the deplorable condition in which he found it, compelled obedience, and during the period of his rule-he died in 1440-its lot was much improved and

at of Austria or France. The connection between the ruler and the army in a state which was founded and maintained by force of arms was, therefore, and remains in modern Prussia so close that the Emperor is from the standpoint of tradition justified in repeating that "the only pillar on wh

ernment and, we are informed by recognized authorities, by a clever but unscrupulous use of his intermediate position between Sweden and Poland, procured his recognition as an independent Duke of Prussia by both powers and eventual

rst great German canal, from the Oder to the Spree (another lead which the present Emperor was to follow), and he inaugurated the colonial policy by founding a settlement on the west African coast. This, likewise, was to be revived by the present Emperor, for it was allowed to lapse even under Frederick the Great, who

her power as a state was first firmly established. His military genius (he is usually said to have originated "the oblique order" of battle) and his policy of dissimulation here stood him in good stead. He sowed discord among his neighbors and awaited the favorable opportunity to attack even on very slight pretexts and in the case of Silesia without the formality of a declaration of war. Like William II, he was a patron of the arts and sciences

This conscientious but ill-starred ruler was to be rendered famous through his misfortunes in the time of Napoleon and has been overshadowed somewhat in history by his beautiful, devoted, and heroic wife Louise. They stand closer to modern history than is generally realized. The present Emperor often mentions them for their heroism and the brave part they played in the War of Liberation and in freeing their country from the incubus of the Napoleonic Empire. They were the parents of Emperor William I, the illustrious grandfather of the present sovereign. If, then, Emperor William II frequently takes occasion to recall the memory of 1813 it should be remembered that in his own family these events were v

acy of Bismarck, that this great aim was to be achieved in the lifetime of the present Emperor. It was in the chapel at K?nigsberg that William I arranged for and held his coronation. He cannot be said to have been crowned;

succeeded to the imperial office; and it is this legacy and this tradition which, in fairness to the Emperor

cted the movement in nearly every field of endeavor is plain from the varied character of his addresses. No one can doubt after reading him that he desired peace, in the sense that he preferred peace to war. The question that will undoubtedly interest the reader most is the problem of the consistency of his various policies; whether, for instance