ness, his inexperience, and his independence of character, awakened in serious minds much apprehension.

In his proclamation of June 18, 1888, to the people, William II apparently endeavored in some degree to mollify this feeling of popular distrust. His filial references to his father, whose noble qualities had won for him the love and trust of the people, aided, perhaps, to dissipate the rumor that they had not been in close accord. "Looking "Looking to the King of all kings," he said, "I have vowed to God, following the example of my father, to be a righteous and gentle prince, to foster piety and the fear of God, to maintain peace, to be a help to the poor and oppressed, and to be a righteous man, a true protector.

Notwithstanding this effusion of lofty sentiments, and the formal declaration of public policies, on June 25th, before the Reichstag in which the hand of Bismarck is plainly visible there remained for some time in the minds of thoughtful Germans a deep solicitude for the future of the Empire, and a fear, often freely expressed in private conversation, that the impetuosity of the young Emperor might involve the country in serious complications, especially in relation to foreign powers.

Conscious of this, and determined not to be influenced by it, William II took his own counsel, but not without resentment toward his critics. Years afterward he said, referring to this period of doubt: "I assumed the crown with a heavy heart; my capacity was everywhere doubted, and everywhere 'I was wrongly judged. Only one had confidence in me, only one believed in me, and that was the army; and, with its support, and trusting in our old God, I undertook my responsible office, knowing full well that the army is the mainstay of my country and the chief pillar of the Prussian throne, to which God in His wisdom has summoned me."

This passage reveals not only Kaiser William's original and persistent basis of self-confidence, but the ground of the public anxiety regarding his want of discretion. In a sense, all Germany was military, and relied upon the army for its protection; but many a shoulder was significantly shrugged at the thought of

what this imaginative, spontaneous, and as yet undisciplined potentate might rashly undertake to say or do that would involve danger to his country.

With violently militaristic inclinations the Emperor combined a disposition to introduce the practice of personal government and personal diplomacy. The first public acts of the new reign were hardly over before William II, to the dread of the conservatively minded, started out upon a round of personal visits to the neighboring courts. On July 14th he reviewed the fleet at Kiel in the uniform of a Prussian admiral, which no King of Prussia had ever worn. The next fortnight was consumed in calls upon his Baltic neighbors. Cruising from port to port on the Hohenzollern, he spent five days at Cronstadt with the Czar of Russia, and followed this with personal visits to the King of Sweden and the King of Denmark. A little later Stuttgart, Munich, Vienna, and Rome were visited; and the year ended with the laying of the first stone of the free port of Hamburg and an inspection of the shipyards of the Vulkan Gesellschaft at Stettin. Already the thought was plainly in the Kaiser's active mind which he afterward expressed in the sentence, "Germany's future lies on the

water.

Germany was not at that time quite ready for so great a widening of its horizon, but William II evidently intended to make it so. The staid conservatism of Bismarck, tempered with the moderate liberalism of Unser Fritz, as the Germans affectionately called Frederick III, would have been far more acceptable to those who had played a great rôle in the founding of the Empire; but, so far as sounding the depths of the German soul is concerned, William II was a better psychologist than either of them. The people might distrust the Kaiser's personal diplomacy, but they were inspired by his imagination. He was bent on creating a new age; and Germany, especially Young Germany, was ready to welcome it.

What the new Kaiser most completely represented was that vague entity known as Deutschtum. From myth and saga and song, from the clash and rattle of arms and the blare of trumpets,

he knew how to evoke it. What Richard Wagner caught and put into music that William II caught and put into government. All that lingered about the Rhine was laid on German lips to sing again. All that was heroic in chivalrous adventure was once more recalled, and it was all made to seem German-only German.

Running through all this was the legend of the Kaiseridee the religious sanctity of God's anointed shepherd of the people. Barbarossa had at last awakened from his long sleep and come forth from the mountain fastnesses which had hidden and guarded his tomb until the day of his deliverance, and his spirit had become reincarnated in the new Emperor.

It is difficult for strangers to realize the forces wrapped up in the revival of a national culture restored from the mold of ages. As a German writer has phrased it:

It was as if the golden lute of Walther von der Vogelweide sang again softly through the ruined castles; as if unseen hands touched the bells in the weatherbeaten cathedral, and a glint of the morning rose over consecrated cities. There was a rushing in the deep, as if the treasure of the Nibelungen moved in the green house of the water; there was a thrill in the air, as if Siegfried's horn sounded in the distance.

If the dim remembrance of an old, almost dead, national culture worked such wonders, how much more would a new, living culture be the sanctuary around which in the future the Germans should gather from near and far? German power and German beauty-these should be the goals of the new Germany! As the fathers had made the Rhine a German river, so the sons should make the ocean a German lake! "Noch lebt der alte Gott in unserem Blut!"

Frankly, this is a revival of primitive paganism. "The old German God" is not the sorrow-burdened Saviour of the world. He is a god of battles, made potent through the swing and blows of his hammer. He is not the All-Holy, or even the Creator of the universe, the AllFather. He is a purely tribal divinity, the apotheosis of tribal power and tribal hate, whose plans and protection are for Germans only. How otherwise can he

with any sense always be referred to as "the old German God"? Only thus can he be spoken of as "our unconditional and avowed ally." "Unconditional," because whatever Germans do is right; and "avowed" because success in arms is the sufficient evidence of his alliance. What made William II the master of German destinies was the fact that he, more than any other, was the embodiment of these tribal rhapsodies.

And, in spite of all opposition, he became the master. His idealism, his impetuosity, his self-confidence, to Bismarck appeared positively dangerous. To many the venerable Chancellor, the virtual creator of the Empire, seemed the essential counterpoise and balancewheel to the young Emperor's spontaneity; and this was the opinion of Prince Bismarck himself, who intended to keep "this young man within proper bounds.

It is unnecessary here to repeat the story, so often told, of the "dropping of the pilot." Bismarck himself believed it to be impossible. When they appeared upon the streets of Berlin, where I often saw them pass in open carriages, the Chancellor received as many signs of deference and devotion as the Emperor. In truth, to all observers, in 1888-89, Bismarck seemed to be the stone of the whole imperial structure. The best asset of the young Emperor was the fact that this seasoned statesman was by his side as friend and counselor.

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In the Emperor's eyes the country squire, whom his grandfather had made a prince, was, notwithstanding his ability and his services, merely the creature and the temporary instrument of the Hohenzollern dynasty, for that alone possessed true authority, which God had directly bestowed upon it. The difference, he thought, must be understood.

Personally, William, as Crown Prince, had learned much from the astute statesman, and Bismarck's great services to the House of Hohenzollern were distinctly recognized by him; but from the moment of his accession the Emperor felt that he was overshadowed in the world's esteem and made distinctly secondary-he who should be first.

For the break, which in the Emperor's mind was inevitable, there were many reasons. Not only was the Prince too conscious of his importance, but he was scheming to cast the mantle of succession to the chancellorship upon the shoulders of his unprincipled son, Count Herbert, for whom he had an inordinate affection. The Prince had aimed to stamp out Socialism; but William intended, to the Chancellor's disgust, to destroy it as a party by winning it as a beneficiary. Bismarck, after forming the Triple Alliance with Austria and Italy, believed he had a reinsurance for peace in a close friendship with Russia; but William, who had seen with indignation the grim fortifications at BrestLitovsk-a name recently made famous in an attempt at peace negotiationshad conceived a profound distrust of the Czar's purposes, and was disposed to cultivate the good-will of France and hold firmly to the Austrian alliance.

It was a risk of some magnitude for the young Kaiser to base the Chancellor's overthrow on a question of foreign policy, in which he was regarded by all Germans as It was, a past-master. therefore, on an issue of personal primacy that the rupture was staged.

On March 15, 1890, having reprimanded the Chancellor on the day before, through a court officer, for having held conversation with Windthorst, chief of the Catholic party, without the previous assent of the Emperor, and having received the Chancellor's reply that he would allow no one to say whom he should receive in his house, William II drove to the palace of the Prince and demanded to see him in person.

Although it was ten o'clock in the morning, the Chancellor was still in bed and had to rise and dress. A stormy interview followed, in which William II asked Bismarck what he meant by negotiations with Windthorst without previously consulting him. The Prince replied that there were no negotiations, only a private conversation; whereupon he was instructed that in the future he must keep the Emperor informed when he conferred with parliamentary leaders.

Deeply resentful, the Prince replied that he could not permit interference with his relations with any one, affirmed

that it was only in compliance with a promise to William I that he had consented to remain in the service of his grandson, and that he was ready to retire.

Contrary to the Chancellor's expectation, the Emperor cried out, “I accept your resignation," and left the room in a rage, without being accompanied by the Chancellor, as the etiquette of the court required.

For days Bismarck struggled with his pride, his ambition, and his indignation, holding back the resignation on the ground that so important a step required careful preparation. In the end it was peremptorily sent for and delivered. Unwilling to admit that he was forced out of office, the Prince aimed a parting arrow in his words to Moritz Busch, that he "did not wish to take upon his shoulders at the close of his career the stupidities and mistakes of a presumptuous and inexperienced mind." To Holstein, who had worked with him in the Foreign Office, he said: "It is all over, and destiny wants me to look upon the destruction of my own work.

...

Can you understand what it is to feel that one has become nothing after having been everything?"

Men

It was the Kaiser's victory. called him light-minded, but he had appropriated the last ounce of personal power, and that is what he desired. The appointment of Caprivi, a general without experience in foreign, or even civil, affairs, as Chancellor seemed the acme of rashness. Yet no one was disposed to challenge "this young man."

At one moment, after the indignities heaped upon the fallen Chancellor when the Kaiser intervened to prevent his promised audience by Franz Joseph at Vienna, and other honors he was expecting on the occasion of his visit to Austria to attend Count Herbert's wedding to an Austrian lady, Bismarck was disposed to react openly against his royal and imperial master. Holstein had gone to him to negotiate a peace with the Kaiser, and as a last argument had said, what if his sovereign should in his anger have him imprisoned. "I wish he would," answered the old Prince; "that would be the end of the Hohenzollern dynasty."

But this was only an ebullition of the Prince's long pent-up wrath. Bismarck himself had closed the door to revolution. In framing the Imperial Constitution he had introduced a "joker" for himself, but the card was in the Emperor's hand. He had made the Emperor absolute, irresponsible, with no tribunal before which he could be summoned, and no legal power in the hands of government or people by which his personal will could be controlled. He who had dealt a death blow to parliamentary government could not appeal to the Reichstag, which he had emasculated. At a word from the Emperor it would be dissolved. If it resisted, the army was there to execute the law. In the Bundesrat the case was equally hopeless. Nothing but a general revolution could shake the power of the Kaiser. The ease with which the Chancellor had been overthrown by a single message, delivered through a court officer, was conclusive demonstration of his utter impotence, except as he spoke by the Emperor's authority.

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There was, moreover, something else besides the Constitution and the army; there was the German tribal religion, of which the Kaiser was the High Priest. "My grandfather," the Emperor said to his faithful Brandenburgers a few days before Bismarck's fall-"my grandfa"my grandfather considered that the office of king was a task that God had assigned to him, to which up to the last moment he consecrated all his forces. That which he thought I also think, and I see in the people and the country that have been transmitted to me a trust that is confided to me by God, which it is my duty to increase. Those who wish to aid me in that task, whoever they are, I welcome with all my heart; those who oppose me in this work I shall crush."

The overthrow of Bismarck was a convincing object-lesson. Fortified by the law, the army, and the religious sentiment of the people, the Kaiser was supreme.

But William II was too intelligent to permit himself to be considered ungrateful for the immense services rendered to the House of Hohenzollern by the recognized creator of the German Empire. In every way he tried to make it appear

that the dismissal of the Chancellor was to him a painful act of duty. Two days after the Prince was relieved of his office the Kaiser telegraphed to Count Gorz Schlitz at Weimar: "I suffer as if I had for a second time just lost my grandfather. But God has so willed it. I must support it." And then, as if to justify his action as a high political necessity, he adds: "I have the position of officer of the watch on the bridge of the Ship of State. The course remains the same; and now, full steam ahead!”

But neither in spirit nor in fact did the course remain the same. Between William II and Prince Bismarck, who was by no means pacified by being created Duke of Lauenburg at the time of his retirement, there were differences of view so wide as to be utterly incompatible, and this was recognized by both. The result was that the influences emanating from Bismarck's estate at Friedrichsruhe had to be officially repressed. On May 23d a general order was issued by the new Chancellor, Caprivi, to all the diplomatic representatives of Germany to inform the governments to which they were accredited "that His Majesty distinguishes between the Bismarck of other days and the Bismarck of the present," and that "no importance should be attached to what the press may say regarding the views of Bismarck."

A later Chancellor, Prince von Hohenlohe, who heard from the Kaiser's own lips, as the Prince reports in his memoirs, the story of the estrangement, quotes William II as saying to him-and for this revelation the Kaiser never forgave him-that for the three weeks before his dismissal of Bismarck he had had "a devil of a time" with him, the question being "whether the dynasty Bismarck or the dynasty Hohenzollern should reign."

In the public speeches immediately following Prince Bismarck's retirement the Kaiser took pains to make it understood, both at home and abroad, that in foreign relations it was the head of the state alone who should be reckoned with. At a banquet in the royal palace at Christiania, for example, he said: "I consider it necessary for a sovereign that he should personally inform himself about everything; that he should form

his opinion for himself; that he should become acquainted with his neighbors, in order to establish and maintain good relations with them: such is the object of my foreign journeys." In the next six months he made six visits to foreign.

courts.

It was this personal diplomacy, this attempt to base international relations upon personal sentiments and compliments and toasts after dinner, that had seriously disturbed the mind of Bismarck; and, as we shall have occasion to see in following the consequences of this policy, in opposition to a policy of foreign affairs based on legal principles and a reasoned understanding of mutual interests, it is this attitude that has kept the German Empire in a ferment and all Europe in a state of periodical crises ever since the reign of William II began. "It is very natural," said Bismarck, after his resentment had cooled down, "that a mentor like myself does not please him, and that he rejects my advice. An old cart-horse and a young courser go ill in harness together. Only political problems are not so easy as a chemical combination: they deal with human beings."

In the opinion of William II, the only human beings to be considered in international politics were the sovereigns; but Bismarck understood that diplomacy has also to do with the interests of nations. The Prince had warned him not to trust to merely personal relations and impressions, but the Kaiser had pursued his own course. His early visit to Alexander III, a man of experience and calculation, immediately after his accession as German Emperor, had left him with a deep prejudice against Russia. The Czar had not taken his youthful enthusiasms very seriously, and the Kaiser had not failed to resent this. When, therefore, Bismarck insisted that care must be given to the friendship with Russia, William II was disposed to think lightly of it.

What Bismarck had feared was a possible alliance between France and Russia, both of which were left isolated by the situation that had been created on the Continent by the formation of the Triple Alliance, begun by the defensive agreement of Germany and Austria in

1879, and completed by similar agreements between Austria and Italy and Germany and Italy in 1882. But the friendship of Prussia with Russia was a far older one, and in Bismarck's mind it was still of great importance to Germany. He had been anxious to retain it, and had taken measures to do so. In fact, had he not feared making Germany altogether dependent upon Russia, and liable in this relation to be held in check by her in any future attack upon France, he might even have preferred an alliance with Russia rather than with Austria; for, as he once said, "In point of material force I held a union with Russia to have the advantage." It was, in fact, the policy which Emperor William I would have preferred.

Bismarck's alter ego, Herr Holstein, the cunning spider at the center of the web in Wilhelmstrasse, has left on record a sentence that reveals the mainspring of Bismarck's diplomacy with a sudden glare of light: "With Russia as an ally we might crush Austria, but we could never destroy France, and it is France. that must be destroyed before the German Empire can develop itself, as it is essential it should do in the future." A friendship with Russia strong enough to secure her neutrality in the future as in the past, but not the obligations of an alliance-unless it became necessary to peace-that, in Holstein's mind, was the policy of Bismarck. policy of Bismarck. "You see,” he went on, in a confidential interview, "the next war is bound to be for us a question of existence. If we fight it successfully, then we shall be able to proceed to a general disarmament of Europe, together with a restriction of our own military forces. Therefore, we ought to watch carefully for the moment when this war can be brought about with the minimum of risk to ourselves and the maximum to our foes. When we consider this moment to have arrived we must begin it, whether we like it or not; and what neither Bismarck nor myself was sure of was, whether Russia would allow us to seize it, whereas with Austria no such complication could be feared. With Austria beside us-who knows-perhaps one or or two Balkan states, we can crush both France and Russia and neutralize England.”