In the matter of personal appearance there are two quite distinct and
different Williams. Those who see the young German Emperor on a State
occasion think of him as almost a tall man, with a stern, thoughtful
face and the most distinguished bearing of any sovereign in Europe. He
holds himself with arrow-like straightness, bears his uniform or robes
with proud grace, and draws his features into a kind of mask of
imperial dignity and reserved wisdom and strength very impressive to
the beholder. It is with what may be called this official countenance of
William’s that the general public is chiefly familiar, for he assumes
it in front of the photographer’s camera, just as he does on parade, at
formal gatherings, and even in his carriage when he drives through the
streets.
There is nothing to cavil at in this. One of the most important
functions of an Emperor must surely be to look like an Emperor.
But in private life, when the absence of ceremonial and the presence of
none but friends permit him to unbend, we see quite another William.
He does not now give, the impression of being a tall man, and his face
wears a softened and kindly expression prone to break into an extremely
sweet and winning smile. When this smiling mood is upon him he looks
curiously like his uncle, the Duke of Connaught, although at other times
the resemblance is not apparent. As a boy he was very white-skinned,
with pale flaxen hair. Years of military outdoor life burned his face to
a tawny brown, through which of late an unhealthy pallor, the product
of overwork and sleeplessness, at times shows itself. His hair is of
average darkness, but his small and habitually curled moustache is of a
light yellowish colour.
An observer who studied him closely during a whole day when he visited
Russia three years ago describes him at the first morning review
of troops as carrying himself almost pompously erect, and wearing
a countenance of such gloomy severity that everybody was afraid to
approach him, so that the officers who saw him for the first time
jokingly whispered to one another that a new William the Taciturn had
come into being. But in the afternoon, when the Czarina presided over
a little garden party, limited almost to the circle of royalty, William
appeared in a straw hat and jaunty holiday costume, smoked cigarettes
continuously, and laughed and chatted with everybody as gaily and
affably as any little bank bookkeeper snatching an unaccustomed day in
the country.
The dominant feature of his make-up is a restless and tireless physical
energy. In this he is perhaps more English than German. The insular
tendency of his out-of-door tastes is very marked. Probably there is no
gentleman on the Continent who keeps a keener or more interested watch
upon the details of English sport, year by year, than William does.
Oxford will not soon forget his characteristic telegram to Max Müller,
recently, congratulating the University crew upon their victory in the
annual race, and every British yachtsman looks forward to this season’s
regatta at Cowes with added interest, from the fact that the Emperor
intends personally competing with his newly-purchased yacht.
William rides like an Englishman--which is another way of saying that
he cuts a better figure in the saddle than most of the other Hohenzollerns, notoriously bad horsemen as a rule, have done. He has all the
British passion for the sea and matters maritime. In his speech to the
officers of the English fleet at Athens he said that his interest in
their navy dated from the earliest days of his boyhood, when he played
about Portsmouth dockyard and gained impressions of the vastness and
splendour of British shipping which had vividly coloured his imagination
for all time. No other German ruler has ever given so much thought
to naval matters, and it is his openly-expressed ambition to give the
Empire during his reign a fighting fleet which shall rank among the
great navies of the world. During the debates in the Reichstag last
March on the excessive naval estimates, he sent to the chairman of that
special budget committee a copy of an old painting representing the
fleet of the Great Elector, with footnotes in his own imperial hand
giving the names and armaments of the various vessels, and bearing
the inscription: “To Herr von Koscielski, in remembrance of his manly
advocacy of my navy, from his grateful Emperor and King.”
[Illustration: 0230]
William’s love of exercise for its own sake is truly English. He fences
admirably, is a skilful boatman, swims and bowls well and with zest, and
delights in mountain climbing. No other Prussian Prince has ever been so
fond of shooting. Hohenzollern notions of this particular sport have for
generations been a matter for derision among Englishmen. Even Carlyle,
who will hardly be described as a sportsman, was alive to the grotesque
features of the _Parforce Fagd_, that curious institution in the Potsdam
Green Forest which owes its origin to Frederic William I. The _Saugarten_
is still there, and young boars, bred in captivity and bereft of their
tusks at a tender age, are still released from their pens when the first
frosts of autumn fall, and after a start of a few minutes are chased
by mounted and gaily caparisoned parties of huntsmen--for all the world
like the tame lion hunts of the Sardanapalian decadence pictured for
us by the Assyrian palace friezes. But William has never shown much
admiration for this pet diversion of the Potsdam officers. His own
tastes are for the most laborious and difficult forms of woodland sport,
and he is an exceptionally good shot.
What renders all this the more remarkable is the fact that his left arm
is practically paralyzed. He has trained himself to hold the rein with
it when he rides, but that is the sum of its usefulness. This defect
dates from the occasion of his birth, and is ascribed to the ignorance
or ineptitude of a physician. The arm is four inches shorter than its
fellow, and has a malformed hand with only rudimentary fingers. The arm
is so wholly limp that William has to lift its hand to even place it
on the hilt of his sword with his right hand. It is in this posture, or
else in the breast of his coat, that he customarily carries it when
out of the saddle. All his photographs show it thus disposed of. At the
table he has a combined knife and fork, which slide into each other. He
uses this with much dexterity, first to cut up his meat and then to eat
it, all of course with one hand.
To have become a skilled marksman under such a weighty disadvantage
indicates great patience and determination. William uses a very light
English gun, having abandoned in despair the attempt to get any made
to his liking in Germany, and carries it on his shoulder with the stock
behind him. At the proper moment he brings the weapon forward by a
movement of his right arm, with incredible swiftness and deadly accuracy
of aim.
Of much graver importance, of course, is the internal inflammation of
the ear, formerly complicated at times with an acute earache, with which
he has now been afflicted for a number of years. Just what the affection
is no one has yet been able to determine. It grows worse in cold and
wet weather, and that is about all that is known of it. The physicians
disagree as to its character. William himself, though occasionally
suffering grievously from it, has never been alarmed about it, and
really believes it to be a local ailment. Its existence naturally enough
suffices to create a certain uneasiness in the minds of his friends,
and of Germans generally, and serves as the fruitful source of alarming
rumours by which, from time to time, the virtue of Continental bourses
is systematically assailed. But no responsible professional man seems
to regard it as necessarily dangerous. This year, although the Emperor’s
appearance shows evident signs of the wear and strain of his great
burdens upon his strength and spirits, this particular affection is said
to be less troublesome than usual.
Undoubtedly, however, this annoying and wearying burden of the flesh
has a great deal to do with William’s disposition towards nervous
excitability and restlessness. A man with the earache cannot be expected
to hold calm mastery over all his moods. It is a reasonable assumption,
too, that to this affliction is in some measure due his phenomenal and
unseasonable physical activity. Sometimes it happens that he is unable
to sleep at all, and he habitually keeps notebooks and pencils within
reach of his bedside, upon which to work until the demon of insomnia is
exorcised. Upon occasion, for distraction, he routs out the garrison of
Berlin, or some regiment of it, before daybreak. In any case he rises at
five.
Both at home and when abroad the amount of labour he gets through in a
day is almost without parallel. It is a commonplace experience for him
to do four hours’ work in his Berlin study in the early morning; then
take a train to Potsdam and spend the remainder of the forenoon in
reviewing troops; then trot back in the saddle with his staff over the
distance of eighteen miles; devote the afternoon to the transaction of
business with his Ministers and officials; receive and return the calls
of two or three visiting royal personages; then dine somewhere where
a speech must be made, and get back to the palace for more work before
bedtime.
In Constantinople and the scarcely less Oriental Athens they still
recall his energetic daily routine with bewildered astonishment. He was
up long before the drowsy muezzins from the minarets summon the faithful
at the hour of prayer--rattling indefatigably about to see all the
sights, reviewing the Sultan’s troops, inspecting all the chief military
establishments, War Ministry, military school, artillery barracks, and
what not besides, asking questions of everybody who had anything to
tell, peering into every nook and cranny with an insatiable curiosity,
working through it all upon notes of instruction and reference to be
forwarded to Berlin every evening, and then sitting up until all the
others were yawning with sleep.
Of course he could not bear the strain of this constant activity if he
were not endowed with two great gifts--prodigious physical vitality and
imagination. Mere strength alone, mated with dulness of mind, would be
broken down and destroyed by the wear and tear of such a life. William
is, physically and mentally, the heir of the best things which European
royalty has to offer. He inherits the bodily force and resolution of
the Hohenzollerns, the _savoir faire_ and comeliness of the Guelphs, the
intellectual acuteness and philosophical tastes of the Coburgs, and the
romantic mediaeval Ascanien strain which Catherine II took to Russia
and her granddaughter brought back again to Weimar--a leaven half divine
half daemonic, which swings between genius and madness. The product
of these marriages might be expected to be what he is--by far the most
striking personality in the whole gallery of contemporary kings.
What other dynasty in Western Europe does not envy William his six
handsome, sturdy, and superbly healthy little sons? Seeing them with
their shining, bright-eyed faces and ordinary well-worn clothes, one
cannot but reflect upon the contrast afforded at Vienna, where the great
rival house of Hapsburg is dying miserably out in pallid epileptics and
vicious dullards.
These six fine boys, the oldest of whom is now in his tenth year, are
reared in the Spartan traditions of the Hohenzollerns. Winter and summer
they are up at six o’clock and into their cold tubs with merciless
punctuality. As a rule they breakfast with their father half an hour
later, and throughout the meal he talks with them alone. They salute
him on entering, and again on leaving, in military fashion; even at this
tender age a considerable portion of their education is upon martial
subjects. The Emperor, in his recent speech at Bonn, indicated an
intention of having the Crown Prince eventually matriculate there, but
for the present, as soon as the lads outgrow their private tutors it
is understood that they are to go to the great cadet school at
Lichterfelde, just outside Berlin. Evidently the _gymnasium_ has no part
in the plans for their education.
The predominance of the military idea, which envelops even these little
baby princes, is indeed the keynote to every phase of their father’s
character. He is first of all a soldier. He lives a plain and simple
life; the service and routine of his palaces are those of an officer’s
mess. He is a heavy eater, with a preference for homely dishes; he
smokes great numbers of light Dutch cigars which cost about three
halfpence each. He addresses all persons whom he meets in an official
capacity in the terse form and curt, sharp tone of a drill sergeant.
Although in private conversation with friends his voice is soft and
pleasant, all his public speeches are declaimed in a harsh and rattling
voice, with abruptly ended sentences. His relations with other
Germans, from the kings down to the peasants, are, in short, those of a
commanding officer on the parade ground. This attitude does not suggest
tact, or lend itself to roundabout’ methods. The bluntly-expressed
rescripts to the officers of the army which William from time to time
has issued, complaining about the harsh personal treatment of the men,
denouncing gambling and extravagant living, and so on, might easily have
provoked a spirit of discontent in a country less wholly ruled by the
idea of military discipline.
Naturally enough, his innate liking for display and scenic effects is
strongly coloured by militarism. He cannot see too many uniforms about
him, and he literally inundates Berlin with martial pageants. One might
suppose that the effect of this would be to satiate the Berliners, but
they maintain a most vigorous and unabated interest in seeing the troops
march by, and throng the sidewalks every time as if the spectacle had
all the excitement of novelty.
In almost every other country the personal tastes or whims of the
sovereign, if he be at all a man of the world, leave a certain mark upon
the every-day dress of the people about him. The Prince of Wales, for
example, during the quarter century in which he has assumed the social
work of his mother’s reign, has made a good many changes in the fashions
of men’s clothes--changes which have been respected in Melbourne and
Washington and Toronto as well as in London. But hardly anybody in
Germany has ever seen the adult William in citizen’s clothes--and
positively no one ever thinks of him save as in uniform.
As William is a soldier in manners and habits, so his conceptions of
government and of domestic statecraft are largely those which might be
expected in a chief of staff. He addresses his people always as their
commander-in-chief. The starting-point of his resolve to get rid of
Bismarck and bring in new men like Miquel and Caprivi, was his discovery
that the Chancellor and the various political parties and factions
which he alternately bullied and cajoled were really so many impediments
standing between him and his subjects. The Hohenzollern desired to speak
directly to the people, as a general to his army, and he has swept aside
whatever stood in the way. Such a posture does not, at first sight, seem
to promise much for progress and enlightened development, but it must
be remembered that universal service in the army has had the effect of
familiarizing all other Germans with this same point of view, so that
really sovereign and subjects get on much better together than in many
countries nominally more free.
The difficulties of government in Germany are almost wholly social and
economic. The Prussian artizan, perforce, spends seven years at school
and three years in the army before he seriously takes up his trade
and sets to working for himself. He marries early and has a swarm
of children, and the necessity of toiling to support all these in an
overcrowded and underpaid labour market grinds upon his temper. He
has, to begin with, a racial tendency to think highly of himself and to
criticize other people; he is afforded only too much justification for
his rooted dislike of aristocrats, employers, and rich people generally,
who in Germany are much less generous and considerate than in some other
countries. Thus he is peculiarly open to the arguments and allurements
of the social democratic propaganda.
The Kaiser’s idea is to meet and counteract this by appealing to
the workman’s military recollections and pride. It is difficult
for outsiders to realize the potency of this appeal. Americans and
Englishmen see the scores of thousands of young Germans who expatriate
themselves to escape military service, and assume, therefore, that it
must be a hateful thing. To those who look forward to it this may be
true. But to the poor German artizan who looks backward upon it this
term of service in the army is apt to seem the pleasantest period of his
life. By comparison with the hardships of his later independent struggle
for existence, he comes to regard this time when he was fed and clothed
and instructed and lodged, and wore a uniform, with affectionate regret.
William, with what seems a sound instinct, lays great stress upon
keeping alive and strengthening this army spirit. His wish is so to
extend a semi-military organization throughout the social structure that
every German may continue to feel that he belongs to the army. To
this end he encourages the founding in each village of a
_Landwehrbezirksverein_, or military club, where veterans and reservists
are invited to come and read the papers over their beer and pipes, take
charge of anniversary celebrations, promote local shooting festivals,
and keep Social Democrats at a healthful distance. This plan is reported
to be working well in small places, but it has not been thus far of much
service in cities and factory centres, and in Mainz the attempt has just
been abandoned owing to the discovery that all the members had become
Social Democrats. But it is important to notice that since William
has actively interested himself in the condition of these lower
social strata, and sharply rated employers and army officers for harsh
treatment of their men, the tone of the Socialists in the Reichstag
toward him has been quite as civil as that of the other members.
For a young man descended from such phenomenally thrifty people as
the Hohenzollerns and Wettins have always been, William has remarkably
lavish, not to say prodigal, notions about money. He was left a very
rich man by his father’s death, and a complaisant Reichstag shortly
thereafter largely increased the amount of his civil list, but for
all that prudent Germans shake their heads over the immense schemes
of expenditure to which he is already committed. The outlay upon the
renovation of the Old Schloss in Berlin, entered upon in the first
months of his reign, startled these good souls, but that turned out to
be a mere drop in the bucket. The whole park arrangements at Potsdam
are to be altered, and the unsightly old Dom--or cathedral--facing the
Lustgarten in Berlin, has been torn down to make room for a magnificent
ecclesiastical edifice worthy of the German capital. This means a heavy
bill of expense, and Berliners hear with mingled emotions that their
Royal Opera House is also to come down, to be supplanted by a wonderful
new structure rivalling in dimensions and cost the Grand Opera House in
Paris.
This last plan reflects the most marked artistic sense discoverable in
William. He is passionately fond of the theatre, and has enlightened
views about its popular usefulness. In decorating the tragedian, Ludwig
Barnay, he has put on record an act by a Prussian King which not even
his grandfather, the old Kaiser, enamoured of all things connected with
the stage as he was, could be brought to contemplate. He delighted in
the company of players to the end of his days, but he always frowned
when the possibility of stars and ribbons was hinted at. William’s
action, therefore, deserves special notice. It must be admitted that his
attitude toward the drama is dictatorial to a degree--very like that
which a general might be assumed to occupy toward a band of mummers
allowed inside the camp to amuse the soldiers; but the German drama is
framed to resist a great deal of pressure to the square inch, and is
indeed rather the better for it. Very comical are the stories told
in Berlin of the way in which William personally superintended the
rehearsals of Wildenbruch’s “The New Lord” last winter, criticizing and
instructing the actors, and rearranging the distribution of the cast to
suit his notions of their several capabilities. The fact that the drama
had for its principal incident the Great Elector’s dismissal of his
father’s Minister, Schwarzenberg, doubtless accounted for much of the
Emperor’s personal solicitude as to its proper presentation. But it is
not in William’s nature to refrain from meddling and dictating about
anything, no matter how trivial, in which his interest is aroused.
The young Kaiser was never what is called a bookish man, and, as has
been said before, the tremendous pressure of his daily work now leaves
him no time whatever for reading. But he still manages to secure a
certain amount of leisure for association with intimate friends, and
among these are a number of highly-cultured men. He gets from them what
others are obliged to seek in books. His inclinations seem to develop
steadily in the direction of respect for intellectual people and
products. It is a part of the phenomenon of belated growth which we have
traced from his thirtieth birthday; mentally and spiritually cramped up
to that time by the despotic influence of the small Bismarckian clique,
he had still the strength and ability to expand his mind and character
with splendid swiftness when finally the bonds were thrown off. One of
the pleasantest features of the Labour Conference gathering in Berlin
was the kindly and appreciative way in which William gave his chief
attention to the venerable Jules Simon, talked with him intelligently
about his works, and presented him with what of all possible gifts he
would most prize--some of the manuscript French writings of Frederic the
Great. It is more than likely that a twelvemonth before William did not
know anything at all about either Jules Simon or his books.
His special liking for the scholarly King of Sweden, and his annual
choice of the sombre solitudes of the Norwegian coast for his
summer season of entire rest, are very interesting evidences of
this progressive mental elevation. William has a natural tendency to
deference and a display of youthful humility toward able men much
older than himself, as all who have seen him in the company of his
grandfather, Moltke, Windhorst, or Bismarck must have noted, but his
attraction toward the learned and gentle Scandinavian monarch is hardly
to be put down to that score. Most other princes of William’s age, or
even much older, devote as little time to King Oscar as politeness will
permit, and for choice prefer to spend their holidays at Homburg or
Monte Carlo.
No gambling Casino or mere frivolous watering-place so much as knows
William by sight. He detests the whole spirit of these princely resorts.
He drinks with tolerable freedom at dinner, and is neither a prig nor
a prude. But he is distinctly a moral man. People who are close to
him aver that he is sincerely religious, and that by no means in a
latitudinarian sense. So far as his actions have thrown light on this
subject they have indicated a spirit of theological tolerance. In the
fourth month of his reign, when the Senior Council of the Evangelical
Lutheran Church sought to overturn the election of the heterodox
Professor Harnack to the chair of Church History and Dogma at Berlin,
William emphatically tossed aside their protest and confirmed the
selection of the University. At about the same time he delivered a
public rebuke to certain enthusiasts who sought to commit him to an
approval of Jew-baiting, and since then, as we have seen, Dr. Stocker
has gone for good. Last winter the Emperor gave a most interesting
and characteristic proof of this broad-minded spirit. Two earnestly
religious young Germans named Haase and May, belonging to a sect called
the New Church, the basis of which is non-resistance, refused on moral
grounds to do military service. Their persistence naturally brought them
into collision with the courts, and they were sentenced to six weeks’
imprisonment. William heard of the case, and, while it would not do to
remit the punishment, he issued directions that their stay in prison
should be made as comfortable as possible. Upon their release he
personally gave the money to pay their passage to America, whither they
sailed with the intention of becoming missionaries.
*****
When William ascended the German throne, under such unpleasant and
prejudicial conditions, the world thought of him as an ill-conditioned
and wildly-reckless young swashbuckler, whose head would speedily be
turned by the intoxicating sense of power, and who would make haste to
plunge Europe into war.
Three years of authority have worked such a change in him--or, perhaps
better, have brought to the top so many strong and admirable
qualities in him which had been dwarfed and obscured by adverse
circumstances--that the world has insensibly come to alter its opinion
of his character. We think of him no longer as a firebrand. He preserves
enough of the eccentricities of a nervous and impetuous individuality,
it is true, to still impart to public scrutiny of his words and deeds
an element of apprehension. One still instinctively reads the reports
of his speeches with an eye cast ahead for wild or thoughtless
utterances--and only too often, as in the case of the “salamander”
remarks to the Borussian Students’ Corps at Bonn the other day, finds
what was anticipated. But even in this matter of an over-hasty and
unrestrained tongue three years have wrought an important improvement,
and in almost all other respects he is unquestionably a better man and
a better ruler than the world took it for granted he would be. Doubtless
as time goes on we shall come to regard him in a still more altered
light.
At present what can be fairly said is that he stands out with clearness
from among European sovereigns as a living and genuine personality--a
young man of imagination, of great activity and executive ability,
taking gravely serious views of his duties and responsibilities, keenly
anxious to do what he believes to be right, and increasingly disposed to
look to wise and elevated sources of judgment for suggestions as to what
is right.
THE END.