This is not said because it is pleasing to whomsoever it may be, for in Germany, and in much of the world outside Germany, this situation is looked upon as unfavorable, and even deplorable; and certainly no American can look upon it with equanimity, for it is of the essence of his Americanism to distrust it. It is, however, so much a fact that to neglect a discussion of this personality would be to leave even so slight a sketch of Germany as this, hopelessly lop-sided. He so pervades German life that to write of the Germany of the last twenty-five years without attempting to describe William the Second, German Emperor, would be to leave every question, institution, and problem of the country without its master-key.
In other chapters dealing more particularly with the political development of Germany, and with the salient characteristics, mental and moral, of the people, we shall see how it has come about, that one man can thus impregnate a whole nation of sixty-five millions with his own aims and ambitions, to such an extent, that they may be said, so to speak, to live their political, social, martial, religious, and even their industrial, life in him. It is a phenomenon of personality that exists nowhere else in the world to-day, and on so large a scale and among so enlightened a people, perhaps never before in history.
Nothing has made scientific accuracy in dealing with the most interesting and most important factors in the world, so utterly inaccurate and misleading, as those infallibly accurate and impersonal agents, electricity and the sun. If one were to judge a man by his photographs, and the gossip of the press, one would be sure to know nothing more valuable about him than that his mustache is brushed up, and that his brows are permanently lowering. Personality is so evasive that one may count upon it that when a machine says “There it is!” then there it is not! You will have everything that is patent and nothing that is pertinent.
We are forever talking and writing about the smallness of the world, of how much better we know one another, and of how much more we should love one another, now that we flash photographs and messages to and fro, at a speed of leagues a second. Nothing could be more futile and foolish. These things have emphasized our differences, they have done nothing to realize our likeness to one another. We are as far from one another as in the days, late in the tenth century, when they complained in England that men learned fierceness from the Saxon of Germany, effeminacy from the Fleming, and drunkenness from the Dane.
As probably the outstanding figure and best-known, superficially known, man in the world, the German Emperor has escaped the notice of very few people who notice anything. His likeness is everywhere, and gossip about him is on every tongue. He is as familiar to the American as Roosevelt, to the Englishman as Lloyd-George, to the Frenchman as Dreyfus, to the Russian as his Czar, and to the Chinese and Japanese as their most prominent political figure. And yet I should say that he is comparatively little known, either externally or internally, as he is.
It is perhaps the fate of those of most influence to be misunderstood. Of this, I fancy, the Emperor does not complain. Indeed, those feeble folk who complain of being misunderstood, ought to console themselves with the thought that practically all our imperishable monuments, are erected to the glory of those whom we condemned and criticised; starved and stoned; burned and crucified, when we had them with us.
William II, German Emperor and King of Prussia, was born January 27, 1859, and became German Emperor June 15, 1888. He is, therefore, in the prime of life, and looks it. His complexion and eyes are as clear as those of an athlete, and his eyes, and his movements, and his talk are vibrating with energy. He stands, I should guess, about five feet eight or nine, has the figure and activity of an athletic youth of thirty, and in his hours of friendliness is as careless in speech, as unaffected in manner, as lacking in any suspicion of self- consciousness, or of any desire to impress you with his importance, as the simplest gentleman in the land.
Alas, how often this courageous and gentlemanly attitude has been taken advantage of! I have headed this chapter The Indiscreet, and I propose to examine these so-called indiscretions in some detail, but for the moment I must ask: Is there any excuse for, or any social punishment too severe for, the man who, introduced into a gentleman’s house in the guise of a gentleman, often by his own ambassador, leaves it, to blab every detail of the conversation of his host, with the gesticulations and exclamation points added by himself? To add a little to his own importance, he will steal out with the conversational forks and spoons in his pockets, and rush to a newspaper office to tell the world that he has kept his soiled napkin as a souvenir. The only indiscretion in such a case is when the host, or his advisers, or gentlemen anywhere, heed the lunatic laughter of such a social jackal.
To count one’s words, to tie up one’s phrases in caution, to dip each sentence in a diplomatic antiseptic, in the company of those to whom one has conceded hospitality, what a feeble policy! Better be brayed to the world every day as indiscreet than that!
It is a fine quality in a man to be in love with his job. Even though you have little sympathy with Savonarola’s fierceness or Wesley’s hardness, they were burning up all the time with their allegiance to their ideals of salvation. They served their Lord as lovers. Many men, even kings and princes and other potentates, give the impression that they would enjoy a holiday from their task. They seem to be harnessed to their duties rather than possessed by them; they appear like disillusioned husbands rather than as radiant lovers.