Chapter XIII: Part 13

For the last three or four years the dominant note in the music of what is called the European Concert, taking Europe for the moment to include Great Britain, has been the state of Anglo-German relations. There have been times, as has been seen, when public feeling in both England and Germany was strongly antagonized, but all through the period there has been evident a desire on the part of both Governments to adopt a mutually conciliatory attitude, and if the war in the Balkans does not lead to a general international conflagration, which at present appears improbable, the two countries may arrive at a permanent understanding. There was, and not so very long ago, a similar state of tension, prolonged for many years, between England and France. That tension not only ceased, but was converted into political friendship by the Anglo-French Agreement of 1904. Parallel with this tension between England and France was the tension between England and Russia, owing to the latter's advance towards England's Indian possessions. The latter state of things ended with the Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1907, and it should engender satisfaction and hope, therefore, to those who now apprehend a war between England and Germany to note that neither of the tensions referred to, though both were long and bitter, developed into war.

The tension between England and Germany of late years has been tightened rather than relaxed by ministerial speeches as well as by newspaper polemics in both countries. One of the most disturbing of the former was the speech delivered by Mr. Lloyd George at the Mansion House on July 21, 1911. Doubtless with the approval of the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George said:

"I believe it is essential, in the highest interest not
merely of this country, but of the world, that Britain
should at all hazards maintain her place and her prestige
amongst the Great Powers of the world. Her potent influence
has many a time been in the past, and may yet be in the
future, invaluable to the cause of human liberty. It has
more than once in the past redeemed continental nations,
which are sometimes too apt to forget that service, from
overwhelming disasters and even from national extinction. I
would make great sacrifices to preserve peace. I conceive
that nothing would justify a disturbance of international
goodwill except questions of the gravest national moment.
But if a situation were to be forced upon us in which peace
could only be preserved by the surrender of the great and
beneficent position Britain has won by centuries of heroism
and achievement, by allowing Britain to be treated, where
her interests are vitally affected, as if she were of no
account in the cabinet of nations, then I say emphatically
that peace at that price would be a humiliation intolerable
for a great country like ours to endure."

These rhetorical platitudes were uttered at the time of the "conversations" between the French and German Foreign Offices about the compensation claimed by Germany for giving France, once for all, a free hand in Morocco. Germany was apparently making demands of an exorbitant character, and what Mr. Lloyd George really meant was that if Germany persisted in these demands England would fight on the side of France in order to resist them. As a genuinely democratic speaker, however, he followed the rule of many publicists, who are paid for their articles by the column and say to themselves, "Why use two words when five will do?"

Another unfortunate remark that may be noted in this connexion was that made by Mr. Winston Churchill in referring to the German navy as "to some extent a luxury." The remark, though true (also to a certain extent), was unfortunate, for it irritated public opinion in Germany, where it was regarded as a species of impertinent interference.

As evidence of the desire on the part of the Emperor and his Government for a friendly arrangement with England may be quoted the statement made in December, 1910, by the German Chancellor, Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg, _to_ the following effect:--

"We also meet England in the desire to avoid rivalry in
regard to armaments, and non-binding _pourparlers_, which
have from time to time taken place, have been conducted on
both sides in a friendly spirit. We have always advanced the
opinion that a frank and sincere interchange of views,
followed by an understanding with regard to the economic and
political interests of the two countries, offers the surest
means of allaying all mistrust on the subject of the
relations of the Powers to each other on sea and land."

The Chancellor went on to explain that this mistrust had manifested itself "not in the case of the Governments, but of public opinion."

With regard, in particular, to a naval understanding between England and Germany, Chancellor von Bülow, in a Budget speech in March, 1909, declared that up to that time no proposals regarding the dimensions of the fleets or the amount of naval expenditure which could serve as a basis for an understanding had been made on the side of England, though non-binding conversations had taken place on the subject between authoritative English and German personalities. In March last year (1912) such proposals may be said to have been made in the form of a suggestion by Sir Edward Grey during the Budget debate that the ratio of 16 to 10 (i.e., 50 per cent. more and 10 per cent. over) should express the naval strength of the two countries. The suggestion was "welcomed" by Admiral von Tirpitz on behalf of Germany in February, 1913. And there the matter rests.

A perhaps inevitable result of the tension between England and Germany during the period under consideration has been the amount of mutual espionage discovered to be going on in both countries. An incident that attracted wide attention was the arrest in 1910 of Captains Brandon and Trench, the former of whom was arrested at Borkum and the latter at Emden. They were tried before the Supreme Court at Leipzig, and were both sentenced to incarceration in a fortress for four years. Many other arrests, prosecutions, and sentences have taken place both in England and Germany since then, with the consequence that English travellers in Germany and German travellers in England, particularly where the travellers are men of military bearing and are in seaside regions, are now liable, under very small provocation, to a suspicion of being spies. An English lady recently made the acquaintance of a German in England. He was a very nice man, she said, and went on to relate how they were talking one day about Ireland. She happened to mention Tipperary. "Oh, I know Tipperary," the German officer said; "it is in my department." "It was a revelation to me," the lady concluded when repeating the conversation to her friends. As a matter of fact, the Intelligence Departments of the army in both Germany and England are well acquainted with the roads, hills, streams, forts, harbours, and similar details of topography in almost all countries of the world besides their own.

In regard to 1911 should be recorded the journey of the Crown Prince and Crown Princess to England to represent the Emperor at the coronation of King George in June; the outbreak in September of the Turco-Italian War, which placed the Emperor in a dilemma, of which one fork was his duty to Italy as an ally in the Triplice and the other his platonic friendship with the Commander of the Faithful; and, lastly, the suspicion of the Emperor's designs that arose in connexion with the fortification of Flushing at a cost to Holland of some £3,000,000. The Emperor was supposed to have insisted on the fortification in order to prevent the use of the Netherlands by Great Britain as a naval base against Germany. Like many another scare in connexion with foreign policy, the supposition may be regarded only as a product of intelligent journalistic "combination."

Finally, among subsidiary occurrences, should be mentioned the meeting of the Emperor and the Czar in July, 1912, at Port Baltic in Finnish waters, accompanied by their Foreign Ministers, with the official announcement of the stereotyped "harmonious relations" between the two monarchs that followed; and the premature prolongation, with the object of showing solidarity regarding the Balkan situation, of the Triple Alliance, which, entered into, as mentioned earlier, in the year 1882, had already been renewed in 1891, 1896, and 1902. The next renewal should be in 1925, unless in the meantime an international agreement to which all Great Powers are signatories should render it superfluous.

The war in the Balkans need only be referred to in these pages in so far as it concerns Germany. The position of Germany in regard to it, so far, appears simple; she will actively support Austria's larger interests in order to keep faith with her chief ally of the Triplice, and so long as Austria and Russia can agree regarding developments in the Balkan situation, there is no danger of war among the Great Powers. People smiled at the declaration of the Powers some little time ago that the _status quo_ in the Balkans should be maintained; but it should be remembered that the whole phrase is _status quo ante bellum_, and that, once war has broken out, the _status_, the position of affairs, is in a condition of solution, and that no new _status_ can arise until the war is over and its consequences determined by treaties. The result of the present war, let it be hoped, will be to confine Turkey to the Orient, where she belongs, and that the Balkan States, possibly after a period of internecine feud, will take their share in modern European progress and civilization.

The amount of declaration, asseveration, recrimination (chiefly journalistic), rectification, intimidation, protestation, pacification, and many other wordy processes that have been employed in almost all countries with the avowed object of maintaining peace during the last four years is in striking contrast to the small progress actually made in regard to a final settlement of either of the two great international points at issue--the limitation of armaments and compulsory arbitration.

Enough perhaps has been said in preceding pages to show the attitude of the Emperor, and consequently the attitude of his Government, towards them. A history of the long agitation in connexion with them is beyond the scope of this work. The agitation itself, however, may be viewed as a step, though not a very long one, on the way to the desired solution, and it is a matter for congratulation that the two subjects have been, and are still being, so freely and copiously and, on the whole, so sympathetically and hopefully ventilated. The great difficulty, apparently, is to find what diplomatists call the proper "formula"--the law-that-must-be-obeyed. Unfortunately, the finding of the formula cannot be regarded as the end of the matter; there still remains the finding of what jurists call the "sanction," that is to say, the power to enforce the formula when found and to punish any nation which fails to act in accordance with it. Nothing but an Areopagus of the nations can furnish such a sanction, but with the present arrangements for balancing power in Europe, to say nothing of the ineradicable pugnacity, greed, and ambition of human nature, such an Areopagus seems very like an impossibility. Time, however, may bring it about. If it should, and the Golden Age begin to dawn, an epoch of new activities and new horizons, quite possibly more novel and interesting than any which has ever preceded it, will open for mankind.

XVI.

THE EMPEROR TO-DAY

What strikes one most, perhaps, on looking back over the Emperor's life and time, are two surprising inconsistencies, one relating to the Emperor himself, the other to that part of his time with which he has been most closely identified.

The first arises from the fact that a man so many-sided, so impulsive, so progressive, so modern--one might almost say so American--should have altered so little either in character or policy during quarter of a century. This is due to what we have called his mediæval nature. He is to-day the same Hohenzollern he was the day he mounted the throne, observing exactly the same attitude to the world abroad and to his folk at home, tenacious of exactly the same principles, enunciating exactly the same views in politics, religion, morals, and art--in everything which concerns the foundations of social life. He still believes himself, as his speeches and conduct show, the selected instrument of Heaven, and acts towards his people and addresses them accordingly. He still opposes all efforts at political change, as witness his attitude towards electoral reform, towards the Germanization of Prussian Poland, towards the Socialists, towards Liberalism in all its manifestations. He is still, as he was at the outset of his reign, the patron of classical art, classical drama, and classical music. He is still the War Lord with the spirit of a bishop and a bishop with the spirit of the War Lord. He is still the model husband and father he always has been. Most men change one way or another as time goes on. With the Emperor time for five-and-twenty years appears to have stood still.

The inconsistency relating to his time arises from the contrast between the real and the seeming character of the reign. For, strikingly and anomalously enough, while the Emperor has been steadily pursuing an economic policy, a policy of peace, his entire reign, as one turns over the pages of its history, seems to resound, during almost every hour, with martial shoutings, confused noises, the clatter of harness, the clash of swords, and the tramp of armies. From moment to moment it recalls those scenes from Shakespearean drama in which indeed no dead are actually seen upon the stage, but at intervals the air is filled with battle cries, "with excursions and alarms," with warriors brandishing their weapons, calling for horses, hacking at imaginary foes, and defying the world in arms.

And yet in reality it has been a period of domestic peace throughout. Though there has been incessant talk of war, and at times war may have been near, it never came, unless the South West African and Boxer expeditions be so called. Commerce and trade have gone on increasing by leaps and bounds. The population has grown at the rate of nearly three-quarters of a million a year. Emperor William the First's social policy has been closely followed. The navy has been built, the army strengthened, the Empire's finances reorganized; in whatever direction one looks one finds a record of solid and substantial and peaceful progress and prosperity. A great deal of it is owing, admittedly, to the Germans themselves, but no small share of it is due to the "impulsive" Emperor's consistency of character and conduct.

Probably the inconsistencies are only apparent. Germany and her Emperor have grown, not developed, if by development is meant a radical alteration in structure or mentality, and if regard is had to the real Germany and the real Emperor, not to the Germany of the tourist, and not to the Emperor of contemporary criticism. It has been seen that the Emperor's nature and policy have not altered. The Constitution of Germany has not altered, nor her Press, nor her political parties, nor her social system, nor, indeed, any of the vital institutions of her national life. With one possible exception--the navy. The navy is a new organic feature, and, like all organisms, is exerting deep and far-reaching influences. Germany, of course, is in a process of development, a state of transition. But nations are at all times in a state of transition, more or less obvious; and it will require yet a good many years to show what new forms and fruits the development now going on in Germany is to bring. The Emperor, it is safe to say, will remain the same, mediæval in nature, modern in character, to the end of his life.

The main thing, however, to be noted both about Germany and the German Emperor is what they stand for in the movement of world-ideas at the present time. Germans cause foreigners to smile when they prophesy that their culture, their civilization, will become the culture and the civilization of the world. The sameness of ideas that prevailed in mediæval times about life and religion--about this life and the life to come--was succeeded, and first in Germany, by an enormous diversity of ideas about life and religion, beginning with the Rationalism (or "enlightenment," as the Germans call it) which set in after the Reformation and the Renaissance; and this diversity again promises--let us at least hope--to go back, in one of the great circles that make one think human thought, too, moves in accordance with planetary laws, to a sameness of views among the nations in regard to the real interests of society, which are peace, religious harmony through toleration, commercial harmony through international intercourse, and the mutual goodwill of governments and peoples. For all this order of ideas the Emperor, notwithstanding his mailed fist and shining armour, stands, and in this spirit both he and the German mind are working.

More than half a century has passed over the Emperor's head; let us look a little more closely at him as the man and the monarch he is to-day. Time appears to have dealt gently with him; the heart, one hears it said, never grows bald, and in all but years the Emperor is probably as young and untiring as ever.

His personal appearance has altered little in the last decade. An observer, who had an opportunity of seeing him at close quarters in 1902, describes him, as he then appeared, as follows:--

"I was standing within arm's length of him at Cuxhaven,
where we were waiting the landing of Prince Henry, his
brother, on his return from America. The _Deutschland_ had
to be warped alongside the quay, and the Emperor, in the
uniform of a Prussian general of infantry, meanwhile mixed
with the suite and chatted, now to one, now to another, with
his usual bonhomie. I was speaking to the American attaché,
Captain H----, when the Emperor came up, and naturally I
stood a little to one side.

"The thing that most struck me was the Emperor's large grey
eyes. As they looked sharply into those of Captain H---- or
glanced in my direction, they seemed to show absolutely no
feeling, no sentiment of any kind. Not that they gave the
notion of hardness or falsity. They were simply like two
grey mirrors on which outward things made no impression.

"Two other features did not strike me as anything out of the
ordinary, but the whole face had an air of ability,
cleverness, briskness, and health. The Emperor is about
middle height, with the body very erect, the walk firm, and
is very energetic in his gestures. I did not notice the
shortness of the left arm, but that may have been because
his left hand was leaning on his sword-hilt. Captain H----
told me he could not put on his overcoat without assistance,
and that the hand is so weak he can do very little with it.
There was nothing of a Hohenzollern hanging under-lip."

The following judgment was formed a year or two ago by an American diplomatist: "I have often met him," the diplomatist said,

"and only speak of the impression he made on me. I would
describe him as intelligent rather than intellectual. He
appreciates men of learning and of philosophic mind, and
while not learned and philosophic himself, enjoys seeing the
learned and philosophic at work, and gladly recognizes their
merit when their labours are thorough and well done. His
mind is marvellously quick, but it does not dwell on
anything for long at a time. It takes in everything
presented to it in, so to speak, a hop, skip, and jump.

"In company he is never at rest, and surprises one by his
lively play of features and the entirely natural and
unaffected expression of his thoughts. He is sitting at a
lecture, perhaps, when a notion occurs to him, and forthwith
indicates it by a humorous grimace or wink to some one
sitting far away from him. He is always saying unexpected
things. On the whole, he is a right good fellow, and I can
imagine that, though he can come down hard on one with a
heavy hand and stern look, he does not do so by the instinct
of a despot, but acting under a sense of duty."

Another diplomatist has remarked the Emperor's habit in conversation of tapping the person he is talking to on the shoulder and of scrutinizing him all over--"ears, nose, clothes, until it makes one feel quite uncomfortable."

The next sketch of him is as he may be seen any day during the yachting week in June at Kiel:--

"The Emperor is in the smoking-room of the Yacht Club,
dressed in a blue lounge suit with a white peaked cap. He is
sitting carelessly on the side of a table, dangling his legs
and discussing with fellow-members and foreign yachtsmen the
experience of the day, now speaking English, now French, now
German. He seems quite in his element as sportsman, and puts
every one at ease round him. His expression is animated and
his voice hearty, if a little strident to foreign ears. His
right hand and arm are in ceaseless movement, emphasizing
and enforcing everything he says. He asks many questions and
often invites opinion, and when it differs from his own, as
sometimes happens, he takes it quite good-humouredly."

To-day the Emperor is outwardly much the same as he has just been described. He is perhaps slightly more inclined to stoutness. His features, though they speak of cleverness and manliness, are forgotten as one looks into the keen and quickly moving grey eyes with their peculiar dash of yellow. He is well set up, as is proper for a soldier ever actively engaged in military duties, and his stride continues firm and elastic. He is still constantly in the saddle. His hair, still abundant, is yet beginning to show the first touches of the coming frost of age, and the reddish brown moustache, once famous for its haughtily upturned ends, has taken, either naturally or by the aid of Herr Haby, the Court barber, who attends him daily, a nearly level form.

In public, whether mounted or on foot, he preserves the somewhat stern air he evidently thinks appropriate to his high station, but more frequently than formerly the features relax into a pleasant smile. The colour of the face is healthy, tending to rosiness, and the general impression given is that of a clever man, conscious, yet not overconscious, of his dignity. The shortness of the left arm, a defect from birth, is hardly noticeable.

The extirpation of a polypus from the Emperor's throat in 1903, which must have been one of the severest trials of his life when the history of his father's mortal illness is remembered, might lead one to suppose that his vocal organs would always suffer from the effects of the operation. It has fortunately turned out otherwise. His voice was originally strong by nature, and remains so. It never seems tired, even when, as it often does, it pleases him to read aloud for his own pleasure or that of a circle of friends. It frequently occurs that he will pick up a book, one of his ancient favourites, Horace or Homer perhaps, Mr. Stewart Houston Chamberlain's "Foundations of the Nineteenth Century"--a work he greatly admires--or a modern publication he has read of in the papers, and read aloud from it for an hour or an hour and a half at a time. Nor is his reading aloud confined to classical or German books. He is equally disposed to choose works in English or French or Italian, and when he reads these he is fond of doing so with a particularly clear and distinct enunciation, partly as practice for himself, and partly that his hearers may understand with certainty. This is not all, for there invariably follows a discussion upon what has been read, and in it the Emperor takes a constant and often emphatic part. It has been remarked that at the close of the longest sitting of this character his voice is as strong and sonorous as at the beginning.

He is still the early riser and hard worker he has always been; still devotes the greater part of his time to the duties that fall to him as War Lord; still races about the Empire by train or motor-car, reviewing troops, laying foundation-stones, unveiling statues, dedicating churches, attending manoeuvres, encouraging yachting at Kiel by his presence during the yachting week, or hurrying off to meet the monarch of a foreign country. He still enjoys his annual trip along the shores of Norway or breaks away from the cares of State to pass a few weeks at his Corfu castle, dazzling in its marble whiteness and overlooking the Acroceraunian mountains, or to hunt or shoot at the country seat of some influential or wealthy subject. In fine, he is still engaged with all the energy of his nature, if in a somewhat less flamboyant fashion than during his earlier years, in his, as he believes, divinely appointed work of guiding Prussia's destiny and building up the German Empire.

It is because he is an Empire-builder that his numerous journeys abroad and restlessness of movement at home have earned for him the nickname of the "travelling Kaiser." The Germans themselves do not understand his conduct in this respect. If one urges that Hohenzollern kings, and none of them more than the Great Elector and Frederick the Great, were incessant travellers, they will reply that their kings had to be so at a time when the Empire was not yet established, when rebellious nobles had to be subdued, and when the spirit of provincialism and particularism had to be counteracted. Hence, they say, former Hohenzollerns had to exercise personal control in all parts of their dominions, see that their military dispositions were carried out, and study social and economic conditions on the spot; but nowadays, when the Empire is firmly established, when the administration is working like a clock and the post and telegraph are at command, the Emperor should stay at home and direct everything from his capital.

The Emperor himself evidently takes a different view. He does not consider the forty-year-old Empire as completed and consolidated, but regards it much as the Great Elector or Frederick the Great regarded Prussia when that kingdom was in the making. He believes in propagating the imperial idea by his personal presence in all parts of the Empire, and at the same time observing the progress that is being made there. He is, finally, a believer in getting into personal touch, as far as is possible, with foreign monarchs, foreign statesmen, and foreign peoples, for he doubtless sees that with every decade the interests of nations are becoming more closely identified.

In connexion with the subject of the Emperor's travelling, mention may be made of the fact that many years ago he thought it necessary to explain himself publicly in reference to the idea, prevalent among his people at the time, that he was travelling too much. "On my travels," he said,

"I design not only to make myself acquainted with foreign
countries and institutions, and to foster friendly relations
with neighbouring rulers, but these journeys, which have
been often misinterpreted, have high value in enabling me to
observe home affairs from a distance and submit them to a
quiet examination."

He expresses something in the same order of thought in a speech telling of his reflections on the high sea concerning his responsibilities as ruler:

"When one is alone on the high sea, with only God's starry
heaven above him, and holds communion with himself, one will
not fail to appreciate the value of such a journey. I could
wish many of my countrymen to live through hours like these,
in which one can take reckoning of what he has designed and
what achieved. Then one would be cured of over
self-estimation--and that we all need."

When the Emperor is about to start on a journey, confidential telegrams are sent to the railway authorities concerned, and immediately a thorough inspection of the line the Emperor is about to travel over is ordered. Tunnels, bridges, points, railway crossings, are all subjected to examination, and spare engines kept in immediate readiness in case of a breakdown occurring to the imperial train. The police of the various towns through which the monarch is to pass are also communicated with and their help requisitioned in taking precautions for his safety. Like any private person, the Emperor pays his own fares, which are reckoned at the rate of an average of fifteen shillings to one pound sterling a mile. A recent journey to Switzerland cost him in fares £200. Of late years he has saved money in this respect by the more frequent use of the royal motor-cars. The royal train is put together by selecting those required from fifteen carriages which are always ready for an imperial journey. If the journey is short, a saloon carriage and refreshment car are deemed sufficient; in case of a long journey the train consists of a buffer carriage in addition, with two saloon cars for the suite and two wagons for the luggage. The train is always accompanied by a high official of the railway, who, with mechanics and spare guard, is in direct telephonic communication with the engine-driver and guard. The carriages are coloured alike, ivory-white above the window-line and lacquered blue below.

All the carriages, with the exception of the saloon dining-car, are of the corridor type. A table runs down the centre of the dining-car; the Emperor takes his seat in the centre, while the rest of the suite and guests take their places at random, save that the elder travellers are supposed to seat themselves about the Emperor. If the Emperor has guests with him they naturally have seats beside or in the near neighbourhood of their host. Breakfast is taken about half-past eight, lunch at one, and dinner at seven or eight. The Emperor is always talkative at table, and often draws into conversation the remoter members of the company, occasionally calling to them by their nickname or a pet name. He sits for an hour or two after dinner, with a glass of beer and a huge box of cigars before him, discussing the incidents of the journey or recalling his experiences at various periods of his reign.

The Emperor's disposition of the year remains much what it was at the beginning of the reign. The chief changes in it are the omission of a yachting visit to Cowes, which he made annually from 1889 to 1895, and, since 1908, the habit of making an annual summer stay at his Corfu castle, "Achilleion," instead of touring in the Mediterranean and visiting Italian cities. January is spent in Berlin in connexion with the New Year festivities, ambassadorial and other Court receptions, drawing-rooms, and balls, and the celebration of his birthday on the 27th. The Berlin season extends into the middle of February, so that part of that month also is spent in Berlin. During the latter half of February and in March the Emperor is usually at Potsdam, occasionally motoring to Berlin to give audience or for some special occasion. April and part of May are passed in Corfu. Towards the end of May the Emperor returns to Germany and goes to Wiesbaden for the opera and Festspiele in the royal theatre; but he must be in Berlin before May has closed, for the spring parade of the Berlin and Potsdam garrisons on the vast Tempelhofer Field. His return on horseback from this parade is always the occasion of popular enthusiasm in Berlin's principal streets. In early June the Emperor stays at Potsdam or perhaps pays a visit to some wealthy noble, and at the end of the month the yachting week calls him to Kiel. Once that is over he proceeds on his annual tour along the coast of Norway. September sees him back in Germany for the autumn manoeuvres. October and November are devoted to shooting at Rominten or some other imperial hunting lodge, or with some large landowner or industrial magnate. The whole of December is usually spent at Potsdam, save for an annual visit to his friend Prince Fürstenberg at Donaueschingen. Naturally he is in Potsdam for Christmas, when all the imperial family assemble to celebrate the festival in good old German style.

In music, as we know, he retains the classical tastes he has always cultivated and sometimes dictatorially recommended. Good music, he has said, is like a piece of lace, not like a display of fireworks. He still has most musical enjoyment in listening to Bach and Handel. The former he has spoken of as one of the most "modern" of composers, and will point out that his works contain melodious passages that might be the musical thought of Franz Lehar or Leo Fall. He has no great liking for the music of Richard Strauss, and his admiration of Wagner, if certain themes, that must, one feels, have been drawn from the music of the spheres, be excepted, is respectful rather than rapturous. Of Wagner's works the "Meistersingers" is "my favourite."

A faculty that in the Emperor has developed with the years is that of applying a sense of humour, not originally small, to the events of everyday life. He is always ready to joke with his soldiers and sailors, with artists, professors, ministers--in short, with men of every class and occupation. Several stories in illustration of his humour are current, but a homely example or two may here suffice. He is sitting in semi-darkness in the parquet at the Royal Opera House. "Le Prophète" is in rehearsal, and it is the last act, in which there is a powder cask, ready to blow everything to atoms, standing outside the cathedral. Fraulein Frieda Hempel, as the heroine, appears with a lighted torch and is about to take her seat on the cask. Suddenly the imperial voice is heard from the semi-gloom: "Fraulein Hempel, it is evident you haven't had a military training or you wouldn't take a light so near a barrel of gunpowder." And the _prima donna_ has to take her place on the other side of the stage. Or he is presenting Professor Siegfried Ochs, the famous manager of the Philharmonic Concerts, with the Order of the Red Eagle, third class, and with a friendly smile gracefully excuses himself for conferring an "Order of the third class on a musician of the first class," by pleading official rule. A third popular anecdote tells of a lady seated beside him at the dinner-table. Salad is being offered to her, but she thinks she is bound to give all her attention to the Emperor and takes no notice of it. Thereupon the Emperor: "Gnadige Frau, an Emperor can wait, but the salad cannot." Possibly the Emperor had in mind Louis XIII, who complained that he never ate a plate of warm soup in his life, it had to pass through so many hands to reach him.

The German takes his theatre as he takes life, seriously. To cough during a performance attracts embarrassing attention, a sneeze almost amounts to misdemeanour. To the German the theatre is a part of the machinery of culture, and accordingly he is not so easily bored as the Anglo-Saxon playgoer, who demands that drama shall contain that great essential of all good drama, action. To the Anglo-Saxon, the more plentiful and rapid the action is, the better. The German, differing from most Anglo-Saxons, likes historical scenes, great processions, costume festivals, the representation of mediæval events in which his monarchs and generals played conspicuous parts. The Emperor has the same disposition and taste.

Yet both national taste and disposition, like other of the nation's characteristics, are slowly altering with the growth of the modern spirit, and Germans now begin to require something of a more modern kind, a more social order, something that comes home more to their business and bosoms. Greater variety in subject is asked for, more laughter and tears, more representations of scenes and life dealing with everyday doings and the fate of the people as distinguished from the doings and fate of their rulers and the upper classes. The Emperor has not followed his people in the new direction. He regards the stage as a vehicle of patriotism, an instrument of education, a guider of artistic taste, an inculcator of old-time morality. Its aim, he appears to think, is not to help to produce, primarily, the good man and good citizen, but the good man and good monarchist, and--perhaps--not so much primarily the good monarchist as the liege subject of the Hohenzollern dynasty. Having secured this, he looks for the elevation of the public taste along his own lines. He assumes that the public taste can be elevated from without, from above, when it can only be elevated proportionately with its progress in general education and its purification from within. Consequently he is for the "classical," as in the other arts. But apart from its aims and uses, the theatre has always appealed to him. His fondness for it is a Hohenzollern characteristic, which has shown itself, with more or less emphasis, in monarch after monarch of the line. Nor is it surprising that monarchs should take pleasure in the stage, since the theatre is one of the places which brings them and their subjects together in the enjoyment of common emotions, and shows them, if only at second hand, the domestic lives of millions, from personal acquaintance with which their royal birth and surroundings exclude them.

The Emperor treats all artists, male and female, in the same friendly and unaffected manner. There is never the least soupçon of condescension in the one case or flirtation in the other, but in both a lively and often unexpectedly well-informed interest in the play or other artistic performance of the occasion, and in the actors' or actresses' personal records. The nationality of the artist has apparently nothing to do with this interest. The Emperor invites French, Italian, English, American or Scandinavian artists to the royal box after a performance as often as he invites the artists of his own country, and, once launched on a conversation, nothing gives him more pleasure than to expound his views on music, painting, or the drama, as the case may be. "Tempo--rhythm--colour," he has been heard to insist on to a conductor whom in the heat of his conviction he had gradually edged into a corner and before whom he stood with gesticulating arms--"All the rest is _Schwindel_." At an entertainment given by Ambassador Jules Cambon at the French Embassy after the Morocco difficulty had been finally adjusted, he became so interested while talking to a group of French actors that high dignatories of the Empire, including Princes, the Imperial Chancellor and Ministers, standing in another part of the _salon_, grew impatient and had to detach one of their number to call the Emperor's attention to their presence. Since then, it is whispered, it has become the special function of an adjutant, when the occasion demands it, diplomatically and gently to withdraw the imperial _causeur_ from too absorbing conversation.

Several anecdotes are current having reference to the Emperor as sportsman. One of them, for example, mentions a loving-cup of Frederick William III's time, kept at the hunting lodge of Letzlingen, which is filled with champagne and must be emptied at a draught by anyone visiting the lodge for the first time. This is great fun for the Emperor, who a year or two ago made a number of Berlin guests, including Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg, the Austrian Ambassador, Szoghenyi-Marich, the Secretary for the Navy, Admiral von Tirpitz, and the Crown Prince of Greece stand before him and drain the cup. As the story goes, "the attempts of the guests to drink out of the heavy cup, which is fixed into a set of antlers in such a way as to make it difficult to drink without spilling the wine, caused great amusement."

The principles of sport generally, it may be here interpolated, are not quite the same in Germany as in England, though no country has imitated England in regard to sport so closely and successfully as Germany. Up to a comparatively few years ago the Germans had neither inclination nor means for it, and though always enthusiastic hunters, hunting--not the English fox-hunting, but hunting the boar and the bear, the wolf and the deer--was almost the sole form of manly sport practised. _Turnen_, the most popular sort of German indoor gymnastics, only began in 1861, a couple of years after the birth of the Emperor. There are now nearly a dozen cricket clubs alone in Berlin, football clubs all over the Empire, tennis clubs in every town, rowing clubs at all the seaports and along the large rivers, nearly all following English rules and in numerous cases using English sporting terms. At the same time sport is not the religion it is in England--indeed, to keep up the metaphor, hardly a living creed.

The German attitude towards sport is not altogether the same as the English attitude. In England the object of the game is that the best man shall win, that he shall not be in any way unfairly or unequally handicapped _vis-à-vis_ his opponent, and the honour, not the intrinsic value of the prize, is the main consideration. These principles are not yet fully understood or adopted in Germany, possibly owing to the early military training of the German youth making the carrying off the prize anyhow and by any means the main object. It is _Realpolitik_ in sport, and a _Realpolitik_ which is not wholly unknown in England; but while the spirit of _Realpolitik_ is still perceivable in German sport, it is equally perceivable that the standard English way of viewing sporting competition is becoming more and more approached in Germany.

The Emperor is an enthusiastic patron of sport of all healthy outdoor kinds, not as sympathizing with the English youth's disposition to regard play as work and work as play, to give to his business any time he can spare from his sport, but because he estimates at its full value its place in the national health-budget. His personal likings are for bear-shooting, deer-stalking, and yachting, but he also wields the lawn-tennis racket and the rapier with fair skill. The names of several of his hunting lodges---Rominten, Springe, Hubertusstock, and so on--are familiar to many people in all countries. Rominten preserve is in East Prussia, and embraces about four square miles, with little lakes and some rising ground. September is the Emperor's favourite month for visiting it. Here one year he shot a famous eight-and-twenty-ender antelope, which had come across from Russian territory. Before the present reign the deer, or pig, or other wild animal used to be beaten up to the royal sportsman of the day, but that practice has long ceased, and the Emperor has to tramp many a mile, and at times crawl on all fours for hundreds of yards, to get a shot.

We have seen that the Emperor's position as King and Emperor renders inevitable his adoption, either of natural bent, which is extremely probable, or from a policy in harmony with the wishes of his people, of a view of the monarch's office that to perhaps most Englishmen living under parliamentary rule must seem antiquated, not to say absurd. This attitude apart, the Emperor possesses, as it is hoped has been sufficiently shown, as modern and progressive a spirit as any of his contemporaries. His instant recognition of all useful modern appliances, particularly, of course, those of possible service in war, is a prominent feature of his mentality. He went, doubtless, too far in heralding Count Zeppelin, in 1909, as "the greatest man of the century," but the very words he chose to use marked his appreciation of the new aeronautical science Count Zeppelin was introducing. Similarly, the moment the automobile had entered on the stage of reliability it won a place in the imperial favour, and is now his most constant means of locomotion. He has never, it is true, emulated the enterprise of his son, the Crown Prince, whom Mr. Orville Wright had as a companion for a quarter of an hour in the air at Potsdam three years ago, but his interest in the aeroplane is none the less keen because he is too conscious of his responsibilities to subject his life to unnecessary risk.

Before closing our sketch of the Emperor as a man by quoting appreciations written by two contemporary writers, one German and the other English, it may be added that there is a statesman still--it is pleasant to think--alive who could, an he only would, draw the Emperor's character perfectly, both as man and monarch. Indeed, as has been seen, he has more than once sketched parts of it in Parliament, but only parts--the whole character of the Emperor, on all its sides and in all its ramifications, has yet to be revealed. Here need only be quoted what Chancellor Bülow--and also, by the way, Princess Bülow--publicly said about the Emperor as man. The Prince's most noteworthy statement was made in the Reichstag in 1903, when, in answer to Leader-of-the-Opposition Bebel, the Prince said, "One thing at least, the Emperor is no Philistine," and proceeded to explain, rather negatively and disappointingly, that the Emperor possesses what the Greeks call megalopsychia--a great soul. One knows but too well the English Philistine, that stolid, solid, self-sufficient bulwark of the British Constitution. The German Philistine is his twin brother, the narrow-minded, conservative burgher. Other epithets the Prince applied to the imperial character were "simple," "natural," "hearty," "magnanimous," "clear-headed," and "straightforward"; while Princess Bülow, during a conversation her husband was having with the French journalist, M. Jules Huret, in 1907, interjected the remark that he was "a person of good birth, _fils de bonne maison_, the descendant of distinguished ancestors, and a modern man of great intelligence."

But let us see how the Emperor appears to his contemporaries. Dr. Paul Liman, who has made the most serious attempt to sketch the character of the Emperor that has yet appeared in German, writes:--

"We see in him a nature whose ground-tone is enthusiasm,
phantasy, and a passionate impulse towards action. Filled
with the highest sense of the imperial rights and duties
assigned to him, convinced that these are the direct
expression of a divine will, he has inwardly thrown off the
bonds of modern constitutional ideas and in words recently
spoken, where he claimed responsibility for fifty-eight
million people, converted these ideas into a formula that,
while unconstitutional, is yet moral and deeply earnest.
These words were doubly valuable as giving insight into the
soul of a man who can be mistaken in his conclusions and
means, but not in his motives, since these are directed to
the general weal. Here, too, we find the explanation of the
fact that at one time he comes before us surrounded with the
blue and hazy nimbus of the romantic period, and at another
as the most modern prince of our time. Out of the rise in
him of the consciousness of majesty there grows a greater
sense of duty, and instead of keeping watch from his turret
over his people he loses himself in detail. And precisely
here must he fail, because modern life with its development
is far too rich in complications and activities to admit of
its submitting to patriarchal benevolence. And because an
artistic strain and a strong fantasy simultaneously work in
him, he moves joyfully beyond the limits of the actual to
raise before our eyes the highly coloured dream of the
picture of a time in which all men, all nations, will be
friendly and reconciled--an artist's dream. Here is
something characteristic, something unusual, to give
particular charm to a personality which has no parallel in
the history of the dynasty hitherto. There may be concealed
in it the seed of illustrious deeds, but only too often
disappointment and contempt lie scornfully in wait when the
deed is accomplished. For the heaven we erect on earth
always comes to naught, and the idealist is always
vanquished in the strife with fact."

So far, Dr. Liman. Mr. Sydney Brooks, in a sketch in _Maclure's Magazine_ for July, 1910, writes:--

"The drawback to any and to every _régime_ of paternal
absolutism is that the human mind is limited. The Kaiser
will not admit it, but his acts prove it. It is not given to
one man to know more about everything than anybody else
knows about anything; and the Kaiser, who is a good deal of
a dilettante, and believes himself omniscient, at times
speaks from a lamentable half-knowledge, and occasionally
has to call in the imperial authority to back up his
verdicts against the judgments of experts.

"Unquestionably his mind is of an unusual order. It is a
facile, quickly moving instrument; it works in flashes; it
assimilates seemingly without effort, and it is at its best
under the highest pressure. The Kaiser is not to be laughed
at for wanting to know all there is to be known, but he may
justly be criticized for failing to distinguish between the
attempt and its failure....

"Is it all charlatanerie? Is it all of a part with his
speech in Russian to the regiment of which the Czar made him
honorary colonel, a studied trumpery effort, designed for a
momentary effect? Is the Kaiser just glitter and tinsel,
impulse and rhapsody, with nothing solid beneath? Is it his
supreme object to make an impression at any cost, to force,
like another Nero, the popular applause by arts more
becoming to a _cabotin_ than a sovereign? Vanity,
restlessness, a consuming desire for the palm without the
dust--an intense and theatrical egotism--are these the
qualities that give the clue to his character and actions?

"I do not think so altogether. The Kaiser has scattered too
much. In an age of specialists on many subjects he speaks
like an amateur. He is always the hero, and often the
victim, of his own imagination; like a star actor, he cannot
bear to be outshone; he is morbidly, almost pruriently,
conscious of the effect he is producing. And on all matters
of intellect and taste his influence makes for blatant
mediocrity. But he is not meretricious; at bottom he is not
by any means as superficial and insincere as he often seems.
He is one of those men in whom an instinct becomes an
immutable truth, an idea a conviction, and a suspicion a
certainty, by an almost instantaneous process; and, the
process completed, action follows forthwith. The Kaiser is
always resolved to do the right thing; the right thing, by
some quaint but invariable coincidence, is whatever he is
resolved to do."

These appreciations from afar may be as sound as they are brilliant, but they rather refer to the non-essential parts of the character of the Emperor in the first flush of imperial glory than to the essential character as it has developed with the years.

As a man--he will be dealt with as monarch presently--his essential character must be judged from his conduct, and conduct extending over a good many years. One might say, conduct and reputation, but that reputation is so often the result of a confused mixture of superficial observation, gossip, tittle-tattle, envy, hatred and uncharitableness, and, in the case of an Emperor, of merely picturesque and effective writing.

There is another source which would materially help us in forming a judgment, but it is wholly wanting in the case of the Emperor. No private correspondence of his is, as yet, available to the world.