Any one living in the atmosphere of German palaces can understand this regret. It is conceded that no one in the world can create like the English that delightful surrounding of freedom and comfort, of cultured, artistic luxury combined with a certain strenuous out-of-door life. The palaces inhabited by the Emperor are huge, magnificent buildings, expensively and uncomfortably constructed; and Germany has too recently been engaged in the stern business of war, her faculties are still too absorbed in the great question of defence, to be able to afford the leisure to accumulate those relics and treasures of past ages which are the charm of England.
“Ah, you have never had a Napoleon to plunder and burn your country houses,” sighed the Emperor, almost apologetically, once, when talking of his English visit: “your Reynoldses and Gainsboroughs, where would they have been if Napoleon’s Marshals or his soldiers had seen them? Perhaps burnt or destroyed, or sent to the Louvre. Think what it must mean to the children of a house to live with one of those pictures, to absorb it unconsciously into their mentalities; they must grow up with a love of beautiful things—they cannot help it. We have nothing of the kind; our houses were stripped and burnt.”
I suggested something about Cromwell and the way his gentle Ironsides in their zeal smashed up the beautiful sculptures of our cathedrals and stabled their horses in the naves. “Though the horses did less damage than the men,” I conceded.
“Ah, Cromwell!” he replied: “Cromwell did nothing in comparison with Napoleon; besides, that was much further back—long ago—Gainsborough and Reynolds not yet born. All our art treasures were absolutely destroyed, burnt, by Napoleon. Art and War cannot live side by side. We have had too much fighting, and now must recreate, rebuild almost from the beginning.”
“Yes, it is lucky for us that we live on an island, and that the French fleet met its Trafalgar,” I said. “Nelson saved our art-treasures for us, I suppose.”
“I expect he did,” returned His Majesty, nodding his head emphatically. “So you recognize that, do you?” and he turned away laughing and still nodding vigorously, thinking, I am sure, a good deal about Nelson and the fleet.
Nobody has ever accused the Emperor of being a diplomatist. He himself believes that he is very astute and can see farther than most men. He is, so to speak, a little blinded by his own brilliancy, by the versatility of his own powers, which are apt to lead him astray. He has never acquired the broad, tolerant outlook of a man who tries to view things from another’s standpoint. He has, in fact, only one point of view—his own—and a certain superficiality characterizes his thought. He has a marvellous memory for facts, deduces hasty inferences, is too prompt in decision, relies perhaps too entirely on his own judgment and his own personal desires and experiences; he does not, in fact, give himself time and opportunity to think things out, to weigh consequences, and he has, unfortunately, few really great minds around him. Conscientious, hard-working men in plenty, but the man of imagination, of original conception, of new ideas—and there are many such men in Germany—does not seem to be admitted to his councils. A great statesman is not at hand just now—one who can impress his thought on the Emperor’s receptive mind and guide his activities, the wonderful forces of his mind, into the best avenues for their development.
In spite of his belief in the special mission of the Hohenzollern family to carry out Divine purposes, an idea not uncorroborated by the course of history, he is in every respect more democratic than his Court. The magic “von” has, under his influence, lost some of its prestige. He has bestowed the coveted syllable on certain people whom he desired to see at Court, and invited to his table many men not enjoying the prepositional advantage. One of them, Herr Ballin, the head and inspiration of the Hamburg-America Line of Steamships, a self-made man with Jewish blood in his veins, was even asked to Rominten, where only the elect expect to meet each other. Not only that—to him was conceded a rare and much-coveted privilege: he was allowed to go stag-hunting, and, worse still, bagged three fine specimens, one of them a stag-royal.
What made this still more galling to the blue-blooded entourage was that a special friend of the Kaiser, a dear, delightful, charming old gentleman whom everybody liked, had been accorded a similar favour, but came back time after time without wearing the coveted spray of oak-leaves in the back of his hat, the leaves whose absence is so painfully eloquent of failure.
A universal groan used to go up from the lingerers in the courtyard as the yellow Jagd-Wagen appeared in sight and still no “Spruch” was visible to the anxious watchers.