Exultant militarism rang out from every line of these utterances. The world listened to this young man boasting about being a war lord, with feelings nicely graded upon a scale of distances. Those near by put hands on sword hilts; those further away laughed contemptuously; but all alike, far and near, felt that an evil day for Germany had dawned.
The funeral of old William at Berlin in March had been a spectacle memorable in the history of mankind—the climacteric demonstration of the pomp and circumstance of European monarchical systems. A simple military funeral, a trifle more ornate than that of a General of division, was given to his successor. The day, June 18th, was the anniversary of Waterloo.
It may have been due to thoughts upon what this day meant in Prussian history; more probably it reflected the chastened and softening influences of these three days’ meditation in the palace of death; from whatever cause, William’s address to the Prussian people, issued on the 18th, was a much more satisfactory performance. The tone of the drill sergeant was entirely lacking, and the words about his father, the departed Frederic, were full of filial sweetness. The closing paragraph fairly mirrors the whole proclamation:
“I have vowed to God that, after the example of my fathers, I will be a just and clement Prince to my people, that I will foster piety and the fear of God, and that I will protect the peace, promote the welfare of the country, be a helper of the poor and distressed, and a true guardian of the right.” Pondering upon the marked difference between this address and the excited and vain-glorious harangue to the fighting men of Germany which heralded William’s accession, it occurred to me to inquire whether or not Dr. Hinzpeter had in the interim made his appearance at Potsdam. No one could remember, but the point may be worth the attention of the future historian.
Studying all that has since happened in the variant lights of these proclamations of June 15th and June 18th, one sees a constant struggle between two Williams—between the gentle, dreamy-eyed, soft-faced boy of Cassel, and the vain, arrogant youth who learned to clank a sword at his heels and twist a baby moustache in Bonn. Such conflicts and clashings between two hostile inner selves have a part in the personal history of each of us. Only we are not out under the searching glare of illumination which beats upon a prince, and the records and results of these internal warrings are of interest to ourselves alone.
William, moreover, has one of those nervous, delicately-poised, highly-sensitized temperaments which responds readily and without reserve to the emotion of the moment. Increasing years seem to be strengthening his judgment, but they do not advance him out of the impressionable age. In the romantic idealism and mysticism of his mind, and in the histrionic bent of his impulses, he is a true son of his father, a genuine heir of the strange fantastic Ascanien strain, which meant greatness in Catharine II, madness in her son Paul, and whimsical staginess in his grand-daughter Augusta.
Like his father, too, his nature is peculiarly susceptible to the domination of a stronger and more deeply rooted personality. The wide difference between them arises from this very similitude. Frederic spent all his adult life under the influence of the broad-minded, cultured, and high-thinking English Princess, his wife. William, during these years now under notice, was in the grip of the Bismarcks.
The ascendency of this family, which attained its zenith in these first months of the young Kaiser’s reign, is a unique thing in the history of Prussia. The Hohenzollerns have been hereditarily a stiff-backed race, much addicted to personal government, and not at all given to leaning on other people. From 1660 to 1860 you will search their records in vain for the name of a minister who was allowed to usurp functions not strictly his own. The first Frederic William was a good deal pulled about and managed by inferiors, it is true, but they did it only by making themselves seem more his inferiors than any others about him. No Wolsey or Richelieu or Metternich could thrive in the keen air of the Mark of Brandenburg, under the old kingly traditions of Prussia.
Bismarck rose upon the ruins of those traditions. In 1862 the Prussian Diet and Prussian society generally were in open revolt against the new king, William I. Constitutionalism and the spread of modern ideas had made the old absolutist system of the Hohenzollerns impossible; budgets were thrown out, constituencies were abetted in their mutiny by the nobles, and the newspaper press was fiercely hostile. The King, a frank, kindly, slow-minded old soldier, did not know what to do. The thought of surrendering his historic prerogatives under pressure, and the resource of sweeping Berlin’s streets with grape-shot, were equally hateful to him. In his perplexity he summoned his Ambassador at Paris to Berlin, and begged him to undertake the defence of the monarchy against its enemies. He made this statesman, Otto von Bismarck, Minister of the King’s House and of Foreign Affairs, and avowedly a Premier who had undertaken to rule Prussia without a Parliament.
It was the old story of the Saxons, being invited to defend the British homestead, and remaining to enjoy it themselves.