"Never was religion a result of science, but a gushing out of the heart and being of mankind, springing from its intercourse with God."
It is anticipating by a few months, but part of a speech the Emperor made in Potsdam at the confirmation of his two sons, August Wilhelm and Oscar—two Hohenzollerns as yet not distinguished for anything in particular—may be quoted in this connexion. Naturally he began by comparing his sons' spiritual situation with that of a soldier on the day he takes the oath of allegiance: they were vorgemerkt, that is, predestined as "fighters for Christ." "What is demanded of you," the imperial father went on, "is that you shall be personalities. This is the point which, in my opinion, is the most important for the Christian in daily life. For there can be no doubt that we can say of the person of the Lord, that He is the most 'personal personality' who has ever wandered among the sons of men…. You will read of many great men—savants, statesmen, kings and princes, of poets also: but nevertheless no word of man has ever been uttered worthy of comparison with the words of Christ; and I say this to you so that you may be in a position to bear it out when you are in the midst of life's turmoil and hear people discussing religion, especially the personality of Christ. No word of man has ever succeeded in making people of all races and all people enthusiastic for the same cause, namely, to imitate Him, even to sacrifice their lives for Him. The wonder can only be explained by assuming that what He said were the words of the living God, which are the source of life, and continue to live thousands of years after the words of the wise have been forgotten. That is my personal experience and it will be yours.
"The pivot and turning-point," he continued,
"of our mortal life, especially of a life full of responsibility and labour—that is clearer and clearer to me every year I live—lies simply and solely in the attitude a man adopts towards his Lord and Saviour;"
and he concludes by exhorting his sons to disregard what people may say about the cult of Christ being irreconcilable with the tasks and responsibilities of "modern" life, but simply to do their best, whatever their occupation, to become a personality after Christ's example.
This is a sound and just statement of Christian faith, and it is quoted here to justify the view that the Emperor's soldiers and his Dreadnoughts, his mailed fist and shining armour, are built and put on in the spirit of precaution and defence. The attitude, it cannot of course be denied, is based on the un-Christlike assumption that all men (and particularly all peoples and their governments and diplomatists) are liars; but in his favour it may be urged that for that saying the Emperor could cite Biblical authority. And yet there is an inconsistency; for the saying is that of one of those same wise men whose words, the Emperor admits, are transitory and mortal.
It is possible that the Emperor had a presentiment of some kind that his life was now in danger, and that the presentiment may have attuned his thoughts to meditation on Christ's life and teaching; for it is a fact, well worthy of remark, that in the fear of death man's one and only relief and consolation is the knowledge that there was, and is, a mediator for him with his Creator. The address at his sons' confirmation was delivered on October 17th, and on Sunday morning, November 8th all the world, it is hardly too much to say, was astonished and pained to learn, by a publication in the Official Gazette, that the Emperor the day before had had to submit to a serious operation on his throat. The announcement spoke of a polypus, or fungoid growth, which had had to be removed; but all over the world the conclusion was come to that the mortal affliction of the father had fallen on the son and that the Emperor was a doomed man. Most providentially and happily it was nothing of the sort. On the 9th the Emperor was out of bed and signing official papers, on the 15th he was allowed to talk in whispers, and on the 17th it was declared by the physicians that all danger was over and that no more bulletins would be issued. On December 14th the Emperor received a congratulatory visit from the President of the Reichstag, who reported to Parliament his impression that "the Emperor had completely recovered his old vigour (great applause) and that his voice was again clear and strong."
The Emperor had passed through what one may suppose to have been the darkest hour of his life. He was naturally in high spirits, and a few days after went to Hannover, where he made a martial speech in which he toasted the German Legion for having "by its unforgettable heroism, in conjunction with Blücher and his Prussians, saved the English army from destruction at Waterloo," a view, of course, which to an Englishman has all the charm of novelty.
One or two further memorable incidents of 1903 may be recorded. Theodore Mommsen, the now aged historian of Rome, the greatest scholar of his time, died in November. He was in his day a Liberal parliamentarian of no mean ability; but for such men there is no career in Germany. However, as it turned out, the German people's loss proved to be all the world's gain. A son of the historian now represents a district of Berlin in the Reichstag. Two years before the historian's death an exchange of telegrams in Latin took place between him and the Emperor. The occasion was the Emperor's laying the foundation-stone of a museum on the plateau where the old Roman castle, known as the Saalburg, stands. The Emperor telegraphed:
"Theodoro Mommseno, antiquitatum romanarum investigatori incomparabili, praetorii Saalburgensis fundamenta jaciens salutem dicit et gratias agit Guilelmus Germanorum Imperator."