Only two other incidents of the visit need be mentioned. One of them was a lecture on "The World Movement," delivered by Mr. Roosevelt in very husky tones (for he was suffering badly from hoarseness) at Berlin University, in the presence of the Emperor and Empress. The other was a parade of 12,000 troops, arranged by the Emperor at Doeberitz, the great military exercise camp near Potsdam, which Mr. Roosevelt, clad in a khaki coat and breeches, and wearing brown leather gaiters and black slouch hat, observed from horseback beside the Emperor. As the troops went by at the close of the review the Emperor and Mr. Roosevelt saluted in military fashion simultaneously.
Immediately after the visit of the Roosevelts, the Emperor was called to England to attend the funeral of King Edward VII. The imperial yacht Hohenzollern, with the Emperor on board, arrived in England on May 19th. Next day the Emperor travelled to Victoria terminus, where he was received and warmly embraced by King George. They proceeded to Buckingham Palace, where the Emperor's first call was made on the widowed Queen Alexandra. On the 21st took place the funeral of King Edward, the procession to Westminster Abbey, where the service was held, being headed by King George with the Emperor on his right and the Duke of Connaught on his left. Both the Emperor and the Duke were dressed in Field-Marshal's uniform and carried the bâtons of their rank. The countenance of the Emperor is described by a chronicler of the time (and the Times) as wearing "an expression grave even to severity."
The procession moved slowly on to the famous Abbey, the Emperor riding a grey horse, saluting at intervals as he rode along. On arrival at the Abbey an incident occurred. As soon as Queen Alexandra's carriage arrived and drew up, the Emperor, according to the accounts of eyewitnesses, ran to the door of the carriage with so much alacrity that he had reached it before the royal servants, and when it appeared that her Majesty was not to alight from that side of the carriage, the Emperor motioned the lacqueys round to the other door, and was there before them to assist her Majesty. This he did, after himself opening the door. The Emperor remained in England only a very few days after the funeral, seeing old friends, among them Lord Kitchener.
As of interest to both Englishmen and Germans may be mentioned the tour through India undertaken by the Crown Prince in November. Steele once happily said of a Lady Hastings that "to love her was a liberal education"; to make a tour through India, it might similarly be said, is an education in the extent and character of British imperial power and administration. The Crown Prince naturally devoted a goodly share of his time to the delights of sport, including tiger-shooting and pig-sticking, but he must also have learned much of England's fine imperial spirit from his intercourse with an official hierarchy as honest and conscientious as that of his own country. The Crown Prince, on his return home, published a volume of hunting reminiscences which does no small credit to him as an author.
The Emperor's "shining armour" political remark dates from this period. He was on a visit to his Triplice ally, Kaiser Franz Josef, in September, 1910, and made a speech at the Vienna Town Hall on the 21st which contained a reference to the loyal conduct he claimed Germany had observed when the action of Austria-Hungary in annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite the wording of the Treaty of Berlin, had raised an outcry in other countries, and in particular strained Austrian relations with Russia. After thanking his audience for the personal reception given him, he continued:
"On the other hand, it seems to me I read in your resolution the agreement of the city of Vienna with the action of an ally in taking his stand in shining armour at a grave moment by the side of your most gracious sovereign."
The outcry caused in the world by Austria's high-handed annexation, and especially in Russia, theoretically always Austria's most probable enemy, owing to conflicting interests in the Balkans, subsided, we know, as suddenly as it was raised. The reason, it is currently believed, and the form in which the rays of the shining armour acted, was an intimation from the Emperor to the Czar that, if necessary, Germany was prepared to fight for Austria.
Peoples are said to have the institutions, and husbands the wives, they deserve; but if German cities, and especially Berlin, have the police they deserve, the fact speaks very uncomplimentarily for their inhabitants. Foreigners in Germany, coming from countries where manners are more natural and obliging, frequently use the adjectives "brutal" and "stupid" when speaking of the Prussian constable. The proceedings of the Berlin police during the Moabit riots in the capital in September this year are often quoted as an example of their brutality, while, as to stupidity, it is enough to say that a stranger in Berlin, discussing its mounted police, naïvely remarked that what most struck him about them was the look of intelligence on the faces of the horses. Judgments of this kind are too sweeping. It should be remembered that Germany is surrounded by countries of which the riff-raff is at all times seeking refuge in it or passing through it, that polyglot swindlers of every kind, the most refined as well as the most commonplace, abound, and that Anarchists are not yet an extinct species. For the Prussian police, moreover, there is a Social Democrat behind every bush.
Possibly to this condition of things, and to the suspicion that Social Democratic organizers were about, was due the gallant charge made by half a dozen policemen, with drawn swords in their hands and revolvers at their belts, on four inoffensive English and American journalists during the Moabit riots. Towards midnight of September 29th the journalists were seated in an open taximeter cab, in a brilliantly lighted square, which some little time before had been swept of rioters—rioters from the Berlin police point of view being any one, man, woman, or child, who is, with guilty or innocent intent, it makes no difference, in or near a theatre of disturbance. Suddenly half a dozen burly policemen, led on by a police spy, as he afterwards turned out to be, charged the cab and laid about them with their swords. They probably only intended to use the flat of their weapons, but one of them succeeded in slashing deeply the hand of Reuter's representative, who was of the party. The other journalists escaped with contusions and bruises, thanks chiefly to the sides of the cab impeding the sword-play of the attackers.
The journalists naturally complained to their Ambassadors, who took up their cause with commendable readiness. Without immediate effect, however; the authorities, though themselves very strong on the point of duty, wondered much at journalists being in a place where duty alone could have brought them, and refused any sort of apology or other satisfaction. The Government, however, eventually expressed its "regret," and a year or two after, possibly in the spirit of conciliation and compensation, agreed to give foreign journalists in Berlin the passe-partout, or coupe-fil, as it is known in France, which is one of the privileges most valued by the journalist, native and foreign, in Paris.