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religion is the Gott with whom William II is in partnership.

Berserker rage, about which the Northern poets say and sing so much. That Talisman is rotten, and the day will come when it will crumble away. Then the old stone gods will rise out of the desolate ruins and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and Thor will spring up with his giant hammer and dash to pieces the old Gothic cathedrals." Heine: Sämmtliche Werke, vol. I, p. 108, "Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland." (1834.)

CHAPTER VI

WILLIAM THE PEACEMAKER

A certain prince of the present time, whom it is well not to name, never does anything but preach peace and good faith, but he is really a great enemy to both.

WILLIAM

MACHIAVELLI, The Prince, XVIII.

ILLIAM II became Emperor in 1888. He had nourished himself on the doctrines and example of Frederick the Great. The claim to reign by Divine Right, which the elder and the younger despot boasted, is a growth of comparatively recent centuries among European sovereigns, not without humor. Stripped of its bombastic rhetoric, it amounts simply to this: when a monarch had successfully established his power, by usurpation, by robbery, or by slaughter, he declared that he was God's anointed. William both liked the idea and knew its potency, even among a race which was fast losing its sense for the Divine in everything. The Romans, after the

time of Augustus, sank into such moral decadence that they went further: they no longer traced the lineage of their Emperors to a divine ancestor, but treated them as gods in the flesh. William's inborn egomania was so pronounced that he might have found no difficulty in believing himself a deity; but while he always spoke in his own person as Emperor by Divine Right, he usually reinforced his commands by clinching references to Gott.

During the earlier years of his reign, his medievalism, his continual harangues on his own will and perfection, his louder and louder exaltation of the Army, his sudden outbursts of passion, or his diplomatic indiscretions, and the growing frequency with which he indulged in the disquieting amusement of rattling his scabbard, annoyed and even disgusted a good many Germans, especially those who lived outside of Prussia. One bold critic published a pamphlet on Caligula, in which he drew the portrait of the mad Roman Emperor so

vividly that myriads of Germans saw in it the likeness of the divinely anointed, neurotic Hohenzollern. The censors, however, soon discouraged criticism by clapping into prison satirists, editors, critics, and other doubters of Imperial Almightiness. Even the most innocent could involuntarily commit the crime of lèse-majesté: for the zealous Prussian officers sniffed treason in trifles. The world laughed irreverently to see the Germans laced in such a strait-jacket and expected that they would tire of William's despotic freaks; but he, and also the Ring, which artfully poured into his mind the suggestions of policies which he supposed he originated, knew the Germans best, and never doubted that they would wear submissively the heaviest yoke, however restive they might be under a light

one.

Foreign observers, distrustful of William from the beginning, were not less repelled by his hypocritical praises of peace than by his sanctimonious patronizing of Gott. Read over

his addresses and detect in them now, if you could not when he uttered them, their hollow note:

The object of the Army is to secure peace for us, or if peace is broken, to be in a position to fight for it with honor.

I am determined to keep peace with every one, so far as it lies in my power.

The mighty German Army is the mainstay of the peace of Europe.

Though the German Navy is specially intended for the safeguarding and preservation of peace, it will, I am confident, do its duty if called into action.

Secure is that peace which stands behind the shield and under the sword of the German Michael.

I lend my hand to any cause which can help to further the great cause of peace.

I look upon the peace of the German people as sacred; but it is our duty to recognize from the signs of the times that we must prepare to defend ourselves from aggression.

The peace of Europe is not in danger: it rests on foundations which are too solid and firm to be easily shaken by the lies and calumnies of mischief-makers.

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