It is often said by historians that no truly great man is every really
understood by the generation, and in the age, for which he labors. Many
instances of the truth of this statement can be easily cited. Two of the
most flagrant have come within the range of my own personal experience.
The first was the character of Abraham Lincoln as depicted by the
British press of 1860-64 and as conceived by the British public opinion
of that era. Mr. Henry Adams, son and private secretary of Mr. Charles
Francis Adams, our Minister Plenipotentiary to Great Britain during that
critical era in our history, writes, in that fascinating book of his
entitled "The Education of Henry Adams,"
that "London was altogether beside itself on one point, in
especial; it created a nightmare of its own, and gave it the
shape of Abraham Lincoln. Behind this it placed another demon,
if possible more devilish, and called it Mr. Seward. In regard
to these two men English society seemed demented. Defense was
useless: explanation was vain. One could only let the passion
exhaust itself. One's best friends were as unreasonable as
enemies, for the belief in poor Mr. Lincoln's brutality and
Seward's ferocity became a dogma of popular faith."
Adams relates further that the last time he saw Thackeray at Christmas
of 1863 they spoke of their mutual friend Mrs. Frank Hampton of South
Carolina, whom Thackeray had portrayed as Ethel Newcome, and who had
recently passed away from life. Thackeray had read in the British papers
that her parents had been prevented by the Federal soldiers from passing
through the lines to see her on her deathbed. Adams writes that
in speaking of it Thackeray's voice trembled and his eyes
filled with tears. The coarse cruelty of Lincoln and his
hirelings was notorious. He never doubted that the Federals
made a business of harrowing the tenderest feelings of
women--particularly of women--in order to punish their
opponents. On quite insufficient evidence he burst into
reproach. Had he (Adams) carried in his pocket the proofs that
the reproach was unjust he would have gained nothing by
showing them. At that moment Thackeray, and all London society
with him, needed the nervous relief of expressing emotions;
for if Mr. Lincoln was not what they said he was, what were
they?
Mr. Lincoln sent over our most skillful politician, Thurlow Weed, and
our most able constitutional lawyer, William M. Evarts, and later our
most brilliant orator, Henry Ward Beecher, followed, for the purpose of
bringing the British people to their senses and correcting British
opinion, but all to little purpose. Gettysburg and Vicksburg did far
more toward modifying that opinion than the persuasiveness of Weed, the
logic of Evarts, or the eloquence of Beecher, and it took Chattanooga,
the March to the Sea, and Appomattox to dispel the illusion entirely.
Today we are laboring under a no less singular illusion than were the
English in 1862. The conception prevailing in England and in this
country concerning the physical, mental, and moral make-up of the German
Emperor is the monumental caricature of biographical literature. I have
had the privilege of his personal acquaintance now for nearly ten years.
I have been brought into contact with him in many different ways and
under many varying conditions, at Court and State functions, at
university ceremonies and celebrations, at his table, and by his
fireside surrounded by his family, when in the midst of his officials,
his men of science, and his personal friends, and, more instructive than
all, alone in the imperial home in Berlin and at Potsdam and in the
castle and forest at Wilhelmshöhe. With all this experience, with all
this opportunity for observation at close range, I am hardly able to
recognize a single characteristic usually attributed to him by the
British and American press of today.
In the first place, the Emperor is an impressive man physically. He is
not a giant in stature, but a man of medium size, great strength and
endurance, and of agile and graceful movement. He looks every inch a
leader of men. His fine gray-blue eyes are peculiarly fascinating. I saw
him once seated beside his uncle, King Edward VII., and the contrast was
very striking, and greatly in his favor.
In the second place, the Emperor is an exceedingly intelligent and
highly cultivated man. His mental processes are swift, but they go also
very deep. He is a searching inquirer, and questions and listens more
than he talks. His fund of knowledge is immense and sometimes
astonishing. He manifests interest in everything, even to the smallest
detail, which can have any bearing upon human improvement. I remember a
half hour's conversation with him once over a cupping glass, which he
had gotten from an excavation in the Roman ruin called the Saalburg,
near Homburg. He always appeared to me most deeply concerned with the
arts of peace. I have never heard him speak much of war, and then always
with abhorrence, nor much of military matters, but improved agriculture,
invention, and manufacture, and especially commerce and education in all
their ramifications, were the chief subjects of his thought and
conversation. I have had the privilege of association with many highly
intelligent and profoundly learned men, but I have never acquired as
much knowledge, in the same time, from any man whom I have ever met, as
from the German Emperor. And yet, with all this real superiority of mind
and education, his deference to the opinions of others is remarkable.
Arrogance is one of the qualities most often attributed to him, but he
is the only ruler I ever saw in whom there appeared to be absolutely no
arrogance. He meets you as man meets man and makes you feel that you are
required to yield to nothing but the better reason.
A Man of Warm Affections.
In the third place, the Emperor impressed me as a man of heart, of warm
affections, and of great consideration for the feelings and well-being
of others. He can not, at least does not, conceal his reverence for, and
devotion to, the Empress, or his love for his children, or his
attachment to his friends. He always speaks of Queen Victoria and of the
Empress Friedrich with the greatest veneration, and once when speaking
to me of an old American friend who had turned upon him he said that it
was difficult for him to give up an old friend, right or wrong, and
impossible when he believed him to be in the right. His manifest respect
and affection for his old and tried officials, such as Lucanus and zu
Eulenburg and von Studt and Beseler and Althoff, give strong evidence of
the warmth and depth of his nature. His consideration for Americans,
especially, has always been remarkable. It was at his suggestion that
the exchange of educators between the universities of Germany and of the
United States was established, and it has been his custom to be present
at the opening lecture of each new incumbent of these positions at
the University of Berlin, and to greet him and welcome him to his work.
He is also the first to extend to these foreign educators hospitality
and social attention. To any one who has experienced his hearty welcome
to his land and his home the assertion that he is arrogant and
autocratic is so far away from truth as to be ludicrous. Again I must
say that I have never met a ruler, in monarchy or republic, in whom
genuine democratic geniality was a so predominant characteristic.
[Illustration: FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS
_(Photo by the Misses Selby.)_
_See Page 526_]
[Illustration: RUDOLF EUCKEN
_See Page 534_]
But the characteristic of the Emperor which struck me most forcibly is
his profound sense of duty and his readiness for self-sacrifice for the
welfare of his country. This is a general German trait. It is the most
admirable side of German nature. And the Emperor is, in this respect
especially, their Princeps. I remember sitting beside him one day, when
one of the ladies of his household asked me if I were acquainted with a
certain wealthy ultra-fashionable New York social leader. I replied, by
name only. She pressed me to know why not more nearly, why not
personally. And to this, I replied that I was not of her class; that I
could not amuse her, and that I did not approve of the frivolous and
demoralizing example and influence of one so favorably circumstanced for
doing good. The Emperor had heard the conversation, and he promptly
said: "You know in Germany we do not rate and classify people by their
material possessions, but by the importance of the service they render
to country, culture, and civilization." One of his sons once told me
that from his earliest childhood his father had instilled into his mind
the lesson that devotion to duty and readiness for sacrifice were the
cardinal virtues of a German, especially of a Hohenzollern. His days are
periods of constant labor and severe discipline. He rises early, lives
abstemiously and works until far into the night. There is no day laborer
in his entire empire who gives so many hours per diem to his work. His
nature is manifestly deeply religious and, in every sentence he speaks,
evidence of his consciousness that the policeman's club cannot take the
place of religious and moral principle is revealed. His frequent appeal
for Divine aid in the discharge of his duties is prompted by the
conviction that the heavier the duty the more need there is of that aid.
His Passion for German Greatness.
He undoubtedly has an intense desire, almost a passion, for the
prosperity and greatness of his country, but his conception of that
prosperity and greatness is more spiritual and cultural than material
and commercial. More than once have I heard him say that he desired to
see Germany a wealthy country, but only as the result of honest and
properly requited toil, and that wealth acquired by force or fraud was
more a curse than a blessing, and was destined to go as it had come. His
conception of the greatness of Germany is as a great intellectual and
moral power rather than anything else. Its physical power he values
chiefly as the creator and maintainer of the conditions necessary to the
production and influence of this higher power. I have often heard him
express this thought.
And in spite of this terrible war, the responsibility for which is by so
many erroneously laid at his door, I firmly believe him to be a man of
peace. I am absolutely sure that he has entered upon this war only under
the firm conviction that Great Britain, France, and Russia have
conspired to destroy Germany as a world power, and that he is simply
defending, as he said in his memorable speech to the Reichstag, the
place which God had given the Germans to dwell on. For seven years I
myself have witnessed the growth of this conviction in his mind and that
of the whole German Nation as the evidences of it have multiplied from
year to year until at last the fatal hour at Serajevo struck. I firmly
believe that there is no soul in this wide world upon whom the burden
and grief of this great catastrophe so heavily rest as upon the German
Emperor. I have heard him declare with the greatest earnestness and
solemnity that he considered war a dire calamity; that Germany would
never during his reign wage an offensive war, and that he hoped God
would spare him from the necessity of ever having to conduct a defensive
war. For years he has been conscious that British diplomacy was seeking
to isolate and crush Germany by an alliance of Latin, Slav, and Mongol
under British direction, and he sought in every way to avert it. He
visited England himself frequently. He sent his Ministers of State over
to cultivate the acquaintance and friendship of the British Ministers,
but rarely would the British King go himself to Germany or send his
Ministers to return these visits. More than once have I heard him say
that he was most earnestly desirous of close friendship between Germany,
Great Britain, and the United States, and had done, was doing, and would
continue to do, all in his power to promote it; but that while the
Americans were cordially meeting Germany half way, the British were
cold, suspicious, and repellent.
I know that the two things which are giving him the deepest pain in this
world catastrophe, excepting only the sufferings of his own kindred and
people, are the enmity of Great Britain and the misunderstanding of his
character, feelings, and purposes in America. To remedy the first we
here can do nothing, but to dispel the second is our bounden duty; and I
devoutly hope that other evidence may prove sufficient to do this to the
satisfaction of the minds of my countrymen than was necessary to
convince the British Nation that the great-hearted Abraham Lincoln was
not a brute nor the urbane William H. Seward a demon of ferocity.