He smashed Von Bismarck in brutal fashion. His father, on the other hand, was wont to say: "I will not touch the Chancellor's statue, but I will remove the stones, one by one, from his pedestal, so that some fine day it will collapse of itself."
It is a curious thing that these reforms and ideas, not having been applied by the monarch whose character would have harmonised perfectly with their conception and execution, now possess no reversionary value. They lose it completely by being subjected to a false paternity.
It is true that occasionally William II envoys some real satisfaction, such as that which he has derived from the coming of the King of Belgium. So impatient was His Majesty to return his visit, that he could not wait for the good season and therefore he came in the bad. At Ostend, Leopold II had caused sand to be strewn at William's coming (the beach being conveniently handy). The King of Prussia only spread mud. Why was the King of Belgium in such a hurry? After the visit of General Pontus to Berlin and his three days in retirement with the German headquarters staff, people at Brussels are still asking what more King Leopold could possibly have to settle in person with Messrs. Moltke and Waldersee at these same headquarters?
The Courier de Bruxelles informs us that certain proposals for an alliance were made to Leopold II during his stay at Potsdam. What! Could Prussia possibly have dared to think of laying an impious hand upon Belgian neutrality! But if not, why should they have been at such pains formerly to prove to me that the thing was inconceivable? Prussia wants a Belgian alliance and the King refuses. Splendid! But let him tell us so himself! I confess that such a document would interest me far more than all that I have published on the subject! May not the explanation of King Leopold's journey be, that William II would like a mobilisation in Belgium just as he wants one in Italy? M. Bleichroder will supply the cash. He has already got his bargain money, viz. Pastor Stöcker in disgrace, and the repudiation of anti-Semitism by its ex-partisan, William II.
November 27, 1890. [16]
How can one avoid taking an interest in William II of Hohenzollern? He is one of those people who, by every means and in every way, insist on being noticed. This up-to-date Emperor is obsessed by the idea of making profit, for purposes of advertisement, out of every sensation; he loves to upset calculations and produce every kind of astonishment. He believes that he has not fulfilled his part, until he has made a number of people lift their arms to heaven at least once a day and exclaim: "William is marvellous!" He wants to hear this cry arise from the humblest and the highest, from the miner's gallery and the palace of his "august confederates," from the workman's cottage and the homes of the middle-class, from the officers' club, from church and chapel, from the Parliament of the Empire and the House of Peers.
Being blasé himself, it pleases him to tickle public opinion with spicy fare; his lack of mental balance compels him to these endless and senseless choppings and changes, to all these schemes projected, proclaimed and cast aside.
The former Court of his grandfather is already in ruins, the work of Bismarck crumbling in the dust; in less than no time he has reduced the old aristocratic and feudal Prussian monarchy to the purest kind of democratic Caesarism.
Perched above every political party in Germany, William the Young wants to be the one and only ruler and judge of all. Among themselves let them differ as and when they will, it being always understood that all these separate opinions must equally be sacrificed to the Emperor.
Before long the King of Prussia will endeavour to be at one and the same time the spiritual head of the Lutheran Church and the temporal Pope of the Catholic Church, the leader of economists, the cleverest of stategists, the one and only socialist, the most marvellous incarnation of the warrior of German legends, the greatest pacifist of modern times, explorer in his day and soothsayer whenever he likes. In his own eyes, William is all these.