power, or a Hohenzollern omnipotency, we do not wish it to be said that it was obtained by the point of the sword, but by the mutual confidence of nations striving for the same ideal.

To multiply these utterances, dating from different years, would merely show the Kaiser's fertility in putting the same thoughts in various forms. The specimens quoted sum up his creed. He admonished his German subjects, and announced to the world, that he was the King of Kings; that he ruled by Divine Right; that he held in the hollow of his hand the life and death of every German; that the Army, with which he gradually associated the Navy, was the supreme institution in the Empire; that the Germans were the Chosen People, who might look forward to winning world-power and even omnipotence; that God was his Ally, who could be depended on in case of need to promote Imperial German ambi

tion.

The substance of these doctrines was not original. Many despots, especially those who

secretly dreamed of military expansion, have used similar phrases. The Jews were the Chosen People; and so have others declared themselves, with perhaps less justification. Autocrats have always assured their subjects —when, indeed, they condescended to give reasons of any kind - that they enjoyed a monopoly of Divine favor. Napoleon, more modest than the windy Prussian, talked about his "Star," thereby suggesting a sufficiently vague and imaginative idea and one less shocking than "God" to pious ears.

William's references to God reveal the bizarre medley of his moral nature. He did not need to go to Machiavelli to learn that a prince should use religion as an instrument for intensifying his subjects' obedience, or as a cloak to hide his own designs against other princes. William needed only to turn to the "Confessions" of Frederick the Great,1 the Prussian

1 The Confessions of Frederick the Great and The Life of Frederick the Great by Heinrich von Treitschke. Edited by D. Sladen; Foreword by G. H. Putnam. (New York: Putnams. 1915.)

Despot whom he most idolized, in order to find expressed with brutal frankness the diabolical creed which William himself has practiced.

Religion [says Frederick, in the Second Morning of his "Confessions"] is absolutely necessary in a state. . . . A king must know very little of politics, indeed, that should suffer his subjects to make a bad use of it; but then it would not be very wise in a king to have any religion himself. Mark well, my dear nephew, what I here say to you; there is nothing that tyrannizes more over the head and heart than religion; because it neither agrees with our passions, nor with those great political views which a monarch ought to have. The true religion of a prince is his interest and his glory. He ought, by his royal station, to be dispensed from having any other. He may indeed reserve outwardly a fair occasional appearance, for the sake of amusing those who are about him, or who watch his motions and character.

If he fears God, or, to speak as the priests and women do, if he fears Hell, like Louis XIV in his old age, he is apt to become timorous, childish, and fit for nothing but to be a Capuchin. If the point is to avail himself of a favorable moment for seizing a province, an army of devils, to

defend it, present themselves to his imagination; we are, on that supposition, weak enough to think it an injustice, and we proportion, in our conscience, the punishment to the crime. Should it be necessary to make a treaty with other Powers, if we remember that we are Christians, we are undone; all would be over with us; we should be constantly bubbles. As to war, it is a trade, in which any the least scruple would spoil everything, and, indeed, what man of honor would ever make war, if he had not the right to make rules that should authorize plunder, fire, and carnage?

I do not, however, mean that one should make a proclamation of impiety and atheism; but it is right to adapt one's thoughts to the rank one occupies. All the popes who had common sense have held no principles of religion but what favored their aggrandizement. It would be the silliest thing imaginable, if a prince were to confine himself to such paltry trifles as were contrived only for the common people. Besides, the best way for a prince to keep fanaticism out of his country is for him to have the most cool indifference for religion.1

1 The genuineness of Frederick's Confessions, or Matinées, as they were called in their first French edition, has been questioned. The passage quoted, however, accords with both his views and practices.

The man who thus instructed his nephew as to the use which a king should make of religion did not take the trouble to pay the tribute which civilized vice is supposed to pay to virtue: how could he, when he neither believed in virtue nor had the faintest conception of its meaning unless it coincided with a despot's plans? He was no more ashamed of his cynical treatment of the most sacred aspirations possible to man than savages are of their ceremonial ́orgies or their cannibalism. He was simply Prussian, enunciating the Prussian ideal, which, being Prussian, required no

excuse.

Possessing neither Frederick's intellect nor his thorough-going contempt for mankind, William II was soft enough to like to appear good-natured on occasions when his autocracy was not in question; and even if he had not understood the value of Gott as a device for keeping the people under, he would probably have continued to harp upon Gott in order to gratify the popular instinct. When analyzed,