Ancestral seat of the Hohenzollern dynasty. The men and women in the
foreground are good types of Germany's peasantry.]
I saw the Emperor a good many times. At the beginning of the war he was
rushed past me in the Unter den Linden in Berlin. The crowds were
cheering him. He seemed supremely happy, as he bowed to right and left
in acknowledgment of the fealty voiced. Since I am not so
extraordinarily gifted as some claim to be, I could not say that I saw
anything in his face but the expression of a man happy to see that his
people stood behind him.
Later I saw him in Vienna. He had come to the capital of his ally to
view for the last time the face of his dead comrade-in-arms, the late
Emperor Francis Joseph. He stepped out of the railroad carriage with a
grave face and hastened toward the young Emperor of Austria to express
his condolences. The two men embraced each other. I was struck by the
apparent sincerity of the greeting. What impressed me more, perhaps, was
the alacrity of the older man. For several minutes the two monarchs
paced up and down on the station platform and conversed on some serious
subject. I noticed especially the quick movements of the German
Emperor's head, and the smart manner in which he faced about when the
two had come to the end of the platform.
The streak of white hair, visible between ear and helmet, accentuated in
his face that expression which is not rare in old army officers, when
the inroads of years have put a damper on youthful martial enthusiasm.
The man was still every inch a soldier, and yet his face reminded me of
that of Sir Henry Irving, despite the fact that there is little
similarity to be seen when pictures of the two men are compared, as I
had shortly afterward opportunity of doing. I should say that in
civilian clothing I would take the Emperor for a retired merchant-marine
captain, in whose house I would expect to find a fairly good library
indiscriminately assembled and balanced by much bric-à-brac collected in
all parts of the world without much plan or design.
Such a retired sea-dog would be a very human being, I take it. His crews
might have ever stood in fear of him, but his familiars would look upon
him with the respect that is brought any man who knows that friendship's
best promoter is usually a judicious degree of reserve.
That was the picture I gained of the Emperor as he marched up and down
the station platform in a Vienna suburb. The same afternoon he was taken
over the Ring in an automobile. There was no cheering by the vast throng
which had assembled to see the mighty War Lord from the north. The old
emperor was dead. The houses were draped in black. Many of the civilians
had donned mourning. To the hats that were lifted, Kaiser William bowed
with a face that was serious. He was all monarch--King and Emperor.
I can understand why a man of the type of Czar Nicholas should lose his
throne in a revolution brought on by the shortage of food and the
exploitation incident to war. How a similar fate could overtake a man of
the type of William II. is not clear to me. For that he is too ready to
act. His adaptiveness is almost proverbial in Germany. I have no doubt
that should the impossible really occur in Germany becoming a republic
William II. would most likely show up as its first president.
In Germany nothing is really ever popular--the works of poets excluded.
For that reason the Emperor is not popular in the sense in which Edward
VII. could be popular. But Emperor William II. is a fact to the German,
just as life itself is that. For the time being the Emperor is the state
to the vast majority, and, incongruous as it may seem at a time when
conditions in Germany are making for equipollence between the
reactionary and the progressive, there is no doubt that no throne in
Europe is more secure than that of the Hohenzollerns.
To understand that one must have measured in Germany the patience and
determination of those who bore the burden of the war as imposed by
scant rations on the one hand and ever-increasing expenditures in
warfare on the other.
Since King Alfonso of Spain is better known than the German
crown-prince, I will refer to him as the ruler whom the latter
resembles most. The two men are of about the same build, with the
difference in favor of the crown-prince, who is possibly a little taller
and slightly better looking in a Teutonic fashion. Both are alike in
their unmilitariness. One looks as little the soldier as the other,
despite the fact that the interested publics have but rarely the
opportunity to see these men in mufti.
After all, that is scant reason for the comparison I have made. The
better reason is that both are alike in their attitude toward the
public. Alfonso is no more democratic than Frederick, nor would he be
more interested in good government.
To my friend Karl H. von Wiegand, most prominent of American
correspondents in Berlin, the German crown-prince said on one occasion:
"I regret that not more people will talk to me in the manner you have
done. I appreciate frankness, but cannot always get it. The people from
whom I expect advice and information make it their business to first
find out what I might expect to hear and then talk accordingly. It is
very disheartening, but what can I do?"
Those who remember the last act of "_Alt-Heidelberg_" will best
understand what the factors are that lead to this. We may pity the mind
that looks upon another human being as something infinitely superior
because accident suddenly places him in a position of great power. I am
not so sure that he who becomes the object of that sort of reverence is
not to be pitied more. Our commiseration is especially due the prince
whom the frailties of human flesh cause to thus lose all contact with
the real life by accepting _ipso facto_ that he is a superior being
because others are foolish enough to embrace such a doctrine.
A very interesting story is told in that connection of Emperor Charles
of Austria. As heir-apparent he had always been very democratic. In
those days he was little more to his brother officers than a comrade,
and all of them, acting agreeably to a tradition in the Austro-Hungarian
army, addressed him by the familiar _Du_--thou.
After he had become Emperor-King, Charles had occasion to visit the east
front, spending some time with the Arz army, at whose headquarters he
had stayed often and long while still crown-prince.
The young Emperor detected a chilling reserve among the men with whom he
had formerly lived. Some of his comrades addressed him as "Your
Majesty." Charles stood this for a while, and then turned on a young
officer with whom he had been on very friendly terms.
"I suppose you must say majesty now, but do me the favor of saying '_Du
Majestät_.' I am still in the army; or are you trying to rule me out of
it?"
This may be considered a fair sample of the cement that has been keeping
the Central states from falling apart under the stress of the war. To us
republicans that may seem absurd. And still, who would deny that the
memory of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln is not a thing that binds
together much of what is Americanism? In the republic the great men of
the past are done homage, in the monarchy the important man of the hour
is the thing. Were it otherwise the monarchy would not be possible. It
is this difference which very often makes the republic seem ungrateful
as compared with the monarchy. But in the aggregate in which all men are
supposedly equal nothing else can be looked for.
We must look to that condition for an answer to the question which the
subject treated here has suggested. And, after all, this is half a dozen
of one and six of the other. In the end we expect any aggregate to
defend its institutions, whether they be republican or monarchical. In
the republic the devotion necessary may have its foundation in the
desire to preserve liberal institutions, while in the monarchy
attunement to the great lodestar, tradition, may be the direct cause of
patriotism. In England, the ideal monarchy, we have a mixture of both
tendencies, and who would say that the mixture, from the British
national point of view, has been a bad one?