In spite of Emperor William being at the present moment over forty years of age, he still retains a great store of boyishness, and in particular, a liking for practical jokes, though never when they are at his own expense! It is not so very long ago that he had notified a number of generals and military dignitaries to meet him at the railroad station at Potsdam, at half-past eleven in the evening, in order to accompany him to manoeuvres that were to be held at a place several hours' distance on the following day. Leaving the palace on foot shortly after eleven, he entered the railroad station by a back door, and managed to slip in without being recognized.
Shielded by the darkness, he made his way unobserved to the special train, which was in waiting, got into his carriage by the door on the opposite side from the platform. For at least half an hour he amused himself by peeping at the officers on the platform, whose faces expressed surprise and vexation that his majesty, ordinarily so punctual, should be so long in coming. Suddenly he raised the blind, opened the window, and intimated by loud and prolonged laughter his presence in the carriage, and the success of his little trick. The astonishment and the dismay depicted on the visages of those on the platform can be more easily imagined than described.
Emperor William is not fond of the press, and has never taken any trouble to conceal his dislike for that branch of the literary profession. It is true that he has been subjected to a good deal of abuse at its hands, and that he has been made the object of calumny sufficient to drive a man so hypersensitive to public comment into a lunatic asylum. Many of the most intricate troubles and most annoying episodes of his life and his reign have been in a large measure due to the press, inasmuch as they were either originated or envenomed by the newspapers. William is as nervous about what the papers will say as a young débutante on the stage. Not only does he keep an anxious watch upon the utterances of all German editors, but he ordains a vigilant scrutiny of the articles printed in foreign countries from the pens of correspondents stationed in Berlin, who, if any unfriendly mention of his name is brought home to them, are ultimately driven out of the country.
One of the first acts of Emperor William's reign was the expulsion from Berlin of a number of foreign journalists, whose criticisms and comments on his attitude towards his mother, as well as on his opposition to the political views of his dead father, had been distasteful to the imperial eye. A year later he caused a new series of press laws to be presented to the Reichstag, which contained such arbitrary provisions for stamping out the remaining liberties of the press that even the Cologne Gazette denounced it as "putting a frightful weapon into the hands of the government for suppressing freedom of speech and silencing opposition." This measure did not pass, in spite of all the efforts of his majesty, and its rejection merely served to embitter the emperor still further against the press.
As far as the German press is concerned William manages to get even with it by insisting upon the strict execution of the laws concerning the crime of Lése majesté with a severity that savors of the middle ages rather than of modern times. Indeed, while there are few prominent journalists in Germany who have not undergone imprisonment since he ascended the throne, for writing of him in a manner that he considered disrespectful, there are some newspapers that are literally obliged to employ distinguished members of their staff for no other purpose than doing time in jail, as the penalty of too free utterances of the sheet with which they are connected.
Of course, William has no such means of dealing with the foreign press, which being more fearless, thanks to its immunity, has naturally subjected him to worse treatment than that of Germany. Occasionally though, he gets even with some of his foreign assailants, and the following story is told of the manner in which he dealt with a newspaper proprietor in New York, who after rendering his journal conspicuous above all others for its personal attacks on his majesty, had the audacity to write him a letter, asking him for a brief article from his, the kaiser's, pen.
The editor in question gave as a pretext for his request, the alleged existence of a widespread belief in the United States that his majesty was not quite right in his mind, and suggested that a brief message, for which a check of five thousand dollars was enclosed, might relieve the anxiety of millions of Germans in America, and convince them that the kaiser was quite sane. Some weeks later the enterprising editor received a visit from the German consul-general in New York. On being admitted to the august presence of the editor the consul-general extracted an envelope from his pocket, and from the envelope the five-thousand-dollar check, to the order of his majesty, the German emperor, and bearing the signature of the editor; the consul-general then made a bow to the latter, handed him the check, made another bow, and withdrew without having said a single word, or opened his mouth, even to greet him!
CHAPTER XIV
Emperor William, like his brother monarch at Vienna, is seldom seen out of uniform. Soldiers above everything else by profession, it constitutes the garb to which they have been accustomed from their boyhood, and both look ill at ease and uncomfortable in civilian clothes.
Francis-Joseph, in fact, never wears "mufti" except when abroad, and it is doubtful whether anyone in Switzerland or in the South of France would have recognized the Emperor of Austro-Hungary in the elderly gentleman who was there on several occasions, and who wore a black round hat, and a rather badly-fitting morning or sack suit of dark cloth, had it not been for the striking appearance of the beautiful and slender black-garbed empress by his side. In the same way, Emperor William, although he gets his civilian clothes from some of the leading London tailors, invariably looks by no means to advantage in them, and suggests the French description of endimanché, that is to say, like a young man in his Sunday, go-to-meeting attire.