William, with what seems a sound instinct, lays great stress upon keeping alive and strengthening this army spirit. His wish is so to extend a semi-military organization throughout the social structure that every German may continue to feel that he belongs to the army. To this end he encourages the founding in each village of a Landwehrbezirksverein, or military club, where veterans and reservists are invited to come and read the papers over their beer and pipes, take charge of anniversary celebrations, promote local shooting festivals, and keep Social Democrats at a healthful distance. This plan is reported to be working well in small places, but it has not been thus far of much service in cities and factory centres, and in Mainz the attempt has just been abandoned owing to the discovery that all the members had become Social Democrats. But it is important to notice that since William has actively interested himself in the condition of these lower social strata, and sharply rated employers and army officers for harsh treatment of their men, the tone of the Socialists in the Reichstag toward him has been quite as civil as that of the other members.
For a young man descended from such phenomenally thrifty people as the Hohenzollerns and Wettins have always been, William has remarkably lavish, not to say prodigal, notions about money. He was left a very rich man by his father’s death, and a complaisant Reichstag shortly thereafter largely increased the amount of his civil list, but for all that prudent Germans shake their heads over the immense schemes of expenditure to which he is already committed. The outlay upon the renovation of the Old Schloss in Berlin, entered upon in the first months of his reign, startled these good souls, but that turned out to be a mere drop in the bucket. The whole park arrangements at Potsdam are to be altered, and the unsightly old Dom—or cathedral—facing the Lustgarten in Berlin, has been torn down to make room for a magnificent ecclesiastical edifice worthy of the German capital. This means a heavy bill of expense, and Berliners hear with mingled emotions that their Royal Opera House is also to come down, to be supplanted by a wonderful new structure rivalling in dimensions and cost the Grand Opera House in Paris.
This last plan reflects the most marked artistic sense discoverable in William. He is passionately fond of the theatre, and has enlightened views about its popular usefulness. In decorating the tragedian, Ludwig Barnay, he has put on record an act by a Prussian King which not even his grandfather, the old Kaiser, enamoured of all things connected with the stage as he was, could be brought to contemplate. He delighted in the company of players to the end of his days, but he always frowned when the possibility of stars and ribbons was hinted at. William’s action, therefore, deserves special notice. It must be admitted that his attitude toward the drama is dictatorial to a degree—very like that which a general might be assumed to occupy toward a band of mummers allowed inside the camp to amuse the soldiers; but the German drama is framed to resist a great deal of pressure to the square inch, and is indeed rather the better for it. Very comical are the stories told in Berlin of the way in which William personally superintended the rehearsals of Wildenbruch’s “The New Lord” last winter, criticizing and instructing the actors, and rearranging the distribution of the cast to suit his notions of their several capabilities. The fact that the drama had for its principal incident the Great Elector’s dismissal of his father’s Minister, Schwarzenberg, doubtless accounted for much of the Emperor’s personal solicitude as to its proper presentation. But it is not in William’s nature to refrain from meddling and dictating about anything, no matter how trivial, in which his interest is aroused.
The young Kaiser was never what is called a bookish man, and, as has been said before, the tremendous pressure of his daily work now leaves him no time whatever for reading. But he still manages to secure a certain amount of leisure for association with intimate friends, and among these are a number of highly-cultured men. He gets from them what others are obliged to seek in books. His inclinations seem to develop steadily in the direction of respect for intellectual people and products. It is a part of the phenomenon of belated growth which we have traced from his thirtieth birthday; mentally and spiritually cramped up to that time by the despotic influence of the small Bismarckian clique, he had still the strength and ability to expand his mind and character with splendid swiftness when finally the bonds were thrown off. One of the pleasantest features of the Labour Conference gathering in Berlin was the kindly and appreciative way in which William gave his chief attention to the venerable Jules Simon, talked with him intelligently about his works, and presented him with what of all possible gifts he would most prize—some of the manuscript French writings of Frederic the Great. It is more than likely that a twelvemonth before William did not know anything at all about either Jules Simon or his books.
His special liking for the scholarly King of Sweden, and his annual choice of the sombre solitudes of the Norwegian coast for his summer season of entire rest, are very interesting evidences of this progressive mental elevation. William has a natural tendency to deference and a display of youthful humility toward able men much older than himself, as all who have seen him in the company of his grandfather, Moltke, Windhorst, or Bismarck must have noted, but his attraction toward the learned and gentle Scandinavian monarch is hardly to be put down to that score. Most other princes of William’s age, or even much older, devote as little time to King Oscar as politeness will permit, and for choice prefer to spend their holidays at Homburg or Monte Carlo.
No gambling Casino or mere frivolous watering-place so much as knows William by sight. He detests the whole spirit of these princely resorts. He drinks with tolerable freedom at dinner, and is neither a prig nor a prude. But he is distinctly a moral man. People who are close to him aver that he is sincerely religious, and that by no means in a latitudinarian sense. So far as his actions have thrown light on this subject they have indicated a spirit of theological tolerance. In the fourth month of his reign, when the Senior Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church sought to overturn the election of the heterodox Professor Harnack to the chair of Church History and Dogma at Berlin, William emphatically tossed aside their protest and confirmed the selection of the University. At about the same time he delivered a public rebuke to certain enthusiasts who sought to commit him to an approval of Jew-baiting, and since then, as we have seen, Dr. Stocker has gone for good. Last winter the Emperor gave a most interesting and characteristic proof of this broad-minded spirit. Two earnestly religious young Germans named Haase and May, belonging to a sect called the New Church, the basis of which is non-resistance, refused on moral grounds to do military service. Their persistence naturally brought them into collision with the courts, and they were sentenced to six weeks’ imprisonment. William heard of the case, and, while it would not do to remit the punishment, he issued directions that their stay in prison should be made as comfortable as possible. Upon their release he personally gave the money to pay their passage to America, whither they sailed with the intention of becoming missionaries.
When William ascended the German throne, under such unpleasant and prejudicial conditions, the world thought of him as an ill-conditioned and wildly-reckless young swashbuckler, whose head would speedily be turned by the intoxicating sense of power, and who would make haste to plunge Europe into war.
Three years of authority have worked such a change in him—or, perhaps better, have brought to the top so many strong and admirable qualities in him which had been dwarfed and obscured by adverse circumstances—that the world has insensibly come to alter its opinion of his character. We think of him no longer as a firebrand. He preserves enough of the eccentricities of a nervous and impetuous individuality, it is true, to still impart to public scrutiny of his words and deeds an element of apprehension. One still instinctively reads the reports of his speeches with an eye cast ahead for wild or thoughtless utterances—and only too often, as in the case of the “salamander” remarks to the Borussian Students’ Corps at Bonn the other day, finds what was anticipated. But even in this matter of an over-hasty and unrestrained tongue three years have wrought an important improvement, and in almost all other respects he is unquestionably a better man and a better ruler than the world took it for granted he would be. Doubtless as time goes on we shall come to regard him in a still more altered light.
At present what can be fairly said is that he stands out with clearness from among European sovereigns as a living and genuine personality—a young man of imagination, of great activity and executive ability, taking gravely serious views of his duties and responsibilities, keenly anxious to do what he believes to be right, and increasingly disposed to look to wise and elevated sources of judgment for suggestions as to what is right.