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.