The blessing of God be with you! The prayers of an entire people and my wishes accompany you, every one. Open the way for culture once for all!
And now take up your journey! Adieu, comrades!
We here subjoin the account of this speech as given in the letter of a volunteer in the 1st East Asiatic Regiment of infantry:
After the Emperor had gone down the front and had greeted separately every battalion, every division or squadron, he pictured the present situation in eloquent words and called attention to the fact that no crime which so cried to Heaven had been recorded in the history of the world, but he also set in their proper light the difficulties of the task which we had set for ourselves and emphasized the fact that we had before us an opponent equal in equipment and fame but ten times superior in numbers. But, and his words ran about as follows, “you will and must defeat him with the help of God and, indeed, in such a way that the Chinese in thousands of years will not presume to raise his hand against a German”; and his voice became deeply moved and powerful as he spoke the following words: “On the strength of the oath to the flag which you have sworn to me I demand that you give no pardon, that no prisoners be taken, for you shall be the avengers of the abomination which has been committed in this present time.” Then followed certain words of farewell, and the speech of the Emperor which for me and for many others will be unforgettably closed with the phrase, “Adieu, comrades.”
THE EMPEROR IN 1900
[CIVIS ROMANUS SUM]
Imperial Limes Museum, Saalburg, October 11, 1900
Limes was the Latin name for the boundary wall extending for about 300 miles from the Rhine to the Danube and separating the Roman Empire from the free Germanic peoples. At Saalburg, in the Taunus Mountains, there stood on the Limes an old Roman citadel which was excavated and restored. The Romanized ceremony at the laying of the corner-stone of the Imperial Limes Museum struck certain German critics as somewhat theatrical. The guards had been drilled to clash their swords on their shields after the manner of the Pretorian guards, the rector of the school offered his homage in Latin verses, and boys whose hair had been dressed in Roman fashion swung their censers. The Emperor’s historical references here about the relation of Germany to Rome are somewhat one-sided. It may be recalled, in connection with the Emperor’s remarks about Augustus and his salutary influence on Germany, that in the Forest of Teutoburg there is a great monument to commemorate the fact that the united German tribes, struggling victoriously against this “Roman culture which fell so fruitfully upon Germany especially,” there annihilated the forces of the general of Augustus, Quintilius Varus.
My first thought to-day goes back in solemn gratitude to my father of everlasting memory, Emperor Frederick III. It is to his creative will and to his activity that Saalburg owes its restoration.