The Opera alone seemed something like normal to one who trusted his eyes rather than his ears for information. There was almost a full house for the "Rosenkavalier"; for music is a solace in time of trouble, as other capitals than Berlin revealed. Officers with close- cropped heads, wearing Iron Crosses, some with arms in slings, promenaded in the refreshment room of the Berlin Opera House between the acts. This in the hour of victory should mean a picture of gaiety. But there was a telling hush about the scene. Possibly music had brought out the truth in men's hearts that war, this kind of war, was not gay or romantic, only murderous and destructive. One had noticed already that the Prussian officer, so conscious of his caste, who had worked so indefatigably to make an efficient army, had become chastened. He had found that common men, butchers and bakers and candlestick makers, could be as brave for their Kaiser as he. And more of these officers had the Iron Cross than not.
The prevalence of Iron Crosses appealed to the risibilities of the superficial observer. But in this, too, there was system. An officer who had been in several battles without winning one must feel a trifle declassed and that it was time for him to make amends to his pride. If many Crosses were given to privates, then the average soldier would not think the Cross a prize for the few who had luck, but something that he, too, might win by courage and prompt obedience to orders.
The masterful calculation, the splendid pretence and magnificent offence could not hide the suspense and suffering. Nowhere were you able to forget the war or to escape the all-pervading influence of the Kaiser. The empty royal box at the Opera, His Opera, called him to mind. What would happen before he reappeared there for a gala performance? When again, in the shuffle of European politics, would the audience see the Tsar of Russia or the King of England by the Kaiser's side?
It was his Berlin, the heart of his Berlin, that was before you when you left the Opera—the new Berlin, which he had fathered in its boom growth, taking few pages of a guidebook compared to Paris. In front of his palace Russian field-guns taken by von Hindenburg at Tannenberg were exhibited as the spoils of his war; while not far away the never-to-be-forgotten grandfather in bronze rode home in triumph from Paris.
One wondered what all the people in the ocean of Berlin flats were thinking as one walked past the statue of Frederick the Great, with his sharp nose pointing the way for future conquerors, and on along Unter den Linden, with its broad pavements gleaming in a characteristic misty winter night, through the Brandenburg Gate of his Brandenburg dynasty, or to the statue of the blood-and-iron Bismarck, with his strong jaw and pugnacious nose—the statesman militant in uniform with a helmet over his bushy brow—who had made the German Empire, that young empire which had not yet known defeat because of the system which makes ready and chooses the hour for its blow.
Not far away one had glimpses of the white statues of My Ancestors of the Sieges Allée, or avenue of victory—the present Kaiser's own idea—with the great men of the time on their right and left hands. People whose sense of taste, not to say of humour, may limit their statecraft had smiled at this monotonous and grandiose row of the dead bones of distinguished and mediocre royalty immortalized in marble to the exact number of thirty-two. But they were My Ancestors, O Germans, who made you what you are! Right dress and keep that line of royalty in mind! It is your royal line, older than the trees in the garden, firm as the rocks, Germany itself. The last is not the least in might nor the least advertised in the age of publicity. He is to make the next step in advance for Germany and bring more tribute home, if all Germans will be loyal to him.
One paused to look at the photograph of the Kaiser in a shop window; a big photograph of that man whose photograph is everywhere in Germany. It is a stern face, this face, as the leader wishes his people to see him, with its erectile moustache, the lips firm set, the eyes challenging and the chin held so as to make it symbolic of strength: a face that strives to say in that pose: "Onward! I lead!" Germans have seen it every day for a quarter of a century. They have lived with it and the character of it has grown into their natures.
In the same window was a smaller photograph of the Crown Prince, with his cap rakishly on the side of his head, as if to give himself a distinctive characteristic in the German eye; but his is the face of a man who is not mature for his years, and a trifle dissipated. For a while after the war began he, as leader of the war party, knew the joy of being more popular than the Kaiser. But the tide turned soon in favour of a father who appeared to be drawn reluctantly into the ordeal of death and wounds for his people in "defence of the Fatherland" and against a son who had clamoured for the horror which his people had begun to realize, particularly as his promised entry into Paris had failed. There can be no question which of the two has the wise head.
The Crown Prince had passed into the background. He was marooned with ennui in the face of French trenches in the West, whilst all the glory was being won in the East. Indeed, father had put son in his place. One day, the gossips said, son might have to ask father, in the name of the Hohenzollerns, to help him recover his popularity. His photograph had been taken down from shop windows and in its place, on the right hand of the Kaiser in the Sieges Allée of contemporary fame, was the bull-dog face of von Hindenburg, victor of Tannenberg. The Kaiser shared von Hindenburg's glory; he has shared the glory of all victorious generals; such is his histrionic gift in the age of the spotlight.
Make no mistake—his people, deluded or not, love him not only because he is Kaiser, but also for himself. He is a clever man, who began his career with the enormous capital of being emperor and made the most of his position to amaze the world with a more versatile and also a more inscrutable personality than most people realize. Poseur, perhaps, but an emperor these days may need to be a poseur in order to wear the ermine of Divine Right convincingly to most of his subjects.