‘This picture is reproduced from one of several dozen almost identical photographs which have been taken of the Kaiser glowering into the emptiness of the upper empyrean from the vantage of a little basaltic crag which crops up at the forks of a road in one of the Imperial game preserves. I have always taken a sort of paternal interest in this apparently “to-be-continued-indefinitely” series of photographs, for it chanced that I was in the company of their central figure on the occasion when he discovered this now famous pedestal, and it was due to a suggestion of mine that he was enabled to turn his find to what he no doubt considers a most felicitous use.
‘It was on one of the early days of an imperial hunting party—just the ordinary affair of its kind, with no one in particular from the outside on hand, and nothing especial in the way of sport offered—and the Kaiser, not being in very good fettle, had bidden me remain in the lodge with him to discuss some experiments I had been conducting on my estates with some drought-resisting barleys and lucernes, the seed of which had been sent to Germany by one of our “agricultural explorers” in Central Asia. The Kaiser’s keenness for skimming the cream of the world and bringing it home for the German people is only exceeded by his vanity,’ the Baron added parenthetically.
‘Having heard all I had to report, my imperial host suggested a stroll in the forest, and it was while pushing on from tree to tree to study the efficacy of a new kind of chemically treated cement the foresters had been using to arrest the progress of decay that we wandered out upon the jutting crag shown in this picture. It was late in the afternoon, and by both of the two converging roads, several hundred metres of vista of each of which were commanded from our lofty eyrie, men were drifting back toward the lodge from the hunt. The dramatic possibilities of the unexpected vantage point—the manner in which one was able to step from behind the drop-curtain of the forest undergrowth to the front of the stage at the tip of the jutting crag—kindled the fire of the Kaiser’s imagination instantly.
‘“What a place from which to review my hunting guests!” he exclaimed, stepping forward and throwing out his chest in his best “reviewing” manner. “Strange I have never noticed it from the road. It must be because the light is so bad here. Yes, that is what the trouble is. They cannot see us even as clearly as we can see them.” (He frowned his palpable disappointment that all eyes from below were not centred upon him where he stood in fine defiance in the middle of his new-found stage.)
‘“If I may venture a suggestion, Your Majesty,” I said, “I think it is the dense shadow from that big tree on the next point that makes it so dark here. Do you not see that the sun is directly behind it at this hour? The removal of that out-reaching limb on the right would give this crag at least an hour of sunshine, but, as a practical forester, I should warn you that doing so would destroy the ‘balance’ of the tree so much that the next heavy storm would probably topple it over to the left. It already inclines that way, and——”
‘“There are several hundred thousand more trees like that in the Black Forest,” cut in the Kaiser, “but not one other look-out to compare with this. My sincere thanks for the suggestion. I will have it carried out.”
‘And so,’ continued Baron Y——, ‘the obscuring limb was removed, and the mutilated tree, as I knew it must, went down the following winter. “My look-out now will have three hours of sunlight instead of one,” the Kaiser observed gleefully when he told me about it; “I was glad to see it go.”
‘It was a case of one monarch against another, and as the Kaiser is resolved to brook no rival, especially where the question of his “sunlight” is concerned, I suppose the sequel was inevitable. All the same I am sorry that—that it was the monarch of the forest that had to go down. But though the tree went down,’ he concluded with a grimace, tossing the magazine into my lap, ‘the “Ajax” pictures still continue.’
‘Wouldn’t “His Place in the Sun” be even an apter title than “Ajax Defying the Lightning”?’ I ventured.
‘Unquestionably,’ was the reply. ‘I had thought of that myself. But, you see, even we Bavarians are very keen in the matter of the extension of Germany’s “übersee” colonies, and it wouldn’t do to make light of our own ambitions.’