William of Germany. Stanley Shaw
of the necessary army funds. Most of the great intellects of Germany—Kant, Goethe, Schiller, Hegel, Fichte, Schleiermacher—had long passed away. Heinrich Heine died in Paris in 1856. Frederick Nietzsche was a youth, Richard Wagner's "Tannhäuser" had just been greeted, in the presence of the composer, with a storm of hisses in the Opera house at Paris. The social condition of Germany may be partially realized if one remembers that the death-rate was over 28 per mille, as compared with 17 per mille to-day; that only a start had been made with railway construction; that the country, with its not very generous soil, depended wholly upon agriculture; that savings-bank deposits were not one-twelfth of what they are now; that there were 60 training schools where there are 221 to-day, and 338 evening classes as against 4,588 in 1910; that many of the principal towns were still lighted by oil; that there was practically no navy; and that the bulk of the aristocracy lived on about the same scale as the contemporary English yeoman farmer. Berlin contained a little less than half a million inhabitants, compared with its three and a half millions of to-day, and the state of its sanitation may be imagined from the fact that open drains ran down the streets.
The Emperor's father, Frederick III, second German Emperor, was affectionately known to his people as "unser Fritz," because of his liberal sympathies and of his high and kindly character. To most Englishmen he is perhaps better known as the husband of the Princess, afterwards Empress, Adelaide Victoria, eldest daughter of Queen Victoria, and mother of the Emperor. Frederick III had no great share in the political events which were the birth-pangs of modern Germany, unless his not particularly distinguished leadership in the war of 1866 and that with France be so considered. The greater part of his life was passed as Crown Prince, and a Crown Prince in Germany leads a life more or less removed from political responsibilities. He succeeded his father, William I, on the latter's death, March 9, 1888, reigned for ninety-nine days, and died, on June 15th following, from cancer of the throat, after an illness borne with exemplary fortitude.
To what extent the character of his parents affected the character of the Emperor it is impossible to determine. The Emperor seldom refers to his parents in his speeches, and reserves most of his panegyric for his grandfather and his grandfather's mother, Queen Louise; but the comparative neglect is probably due to no want of filial admiration and respect, while the frequent references to his grandfather in particular are explained by the great share the latter took in the formation of the Empire and by his unbounded popularity. The Crown Prince was an affectionate but not an easy-going father, with a passion for the arts and sciences; his mother also was a disciplinarian, and, equally with her husband, passionately fond of art; and it is therefore not improbable that these traits descended to the Emperor. As to whether the alleged "liberality" of the Crown Prince descended to him depends on the sense given to the word "liberal." If it is taken to mean an ardent desire for the good and happiness of the people, it did; if it is taken to mean any inclination to give the people authority to govern themselves and direct their own destinies, it did not.
The mother of the Emperor, the Empress Frederick, had much of Queen Victoria's good sense and still more of her strong will. A thoroughly English princess, she had, in German eyes, one serious defect: she failed to see, or at least to acknowledge, the superiority of most things German to most things English. She had an English nurse, Emma Hobbs, to assist at the birth of the future Emperor. She made English the language of the family life, and never lost her English tastes and sympathies; consequently she was called, always with an accent of reproach, "the Engländerin," and in German writings is represented as having wished to anglicize not only her husband, her children, and her Court, but also her adopted country and its people. A chaplain of the English Church in Berlin, the Rev. J.H. Fry, who met her many times, describes her as follows:—
"She was not the wife for a German Emperor, she so English and insisted so strongly on her English ways. The result was that she was very unpopular in Germany, and the Germans said many wicked things of her. She hated Berlin, and if her son, the present Emperor, had not required that she should come to the capital every winter, she would have lived altogether at Cronberg in the villa an Italian friend bequeathed to her.
"She was extremely musical, had extensively cultivated her talents in this respect, and was an accomplished linguist. Like her mother, Queen Victoria, she was unusually strong-minded, and was always believed to rule over her amiable and gentle husband. Her interest in the English community was great, another reason for the dislike with which the Germans regarded her. To her the community owes the pretty little English church in the Mon Bijou Platz (Berlin), which she used to attend regularly, and where a funeral service, at which the Emperor was present, was held in memory of her.
"German feeling was further embittered against her by the Morell Mackenzie incident, and to this day controversy rages round the famous English surgeon's name. The controversy is as to whether or not Morell Mackenzie honestly believed what he said when he diagnosed the Emperor's illness as non-cancerous in opposition to the opinion of distinguished German doctors like Professor Bergmann. Under German law no one can mount the throne of Prussia who is afflicted with a mortal sickness. For long it had been suspected that the Emperor's throat was fatally affected, and, therefore, when King William was dying, it became of dynastic and national importance to establish the fact one way or other. Queen Victoria was ardently desirous of seeing her daughter an Empress, and sent Sir Morrell Mackenzie to Germany to examine the royal patient. On the verdict being given that the disease was not cancer, the Crown Prince mounted the throne, and Queen Victoria's ambition for her daughter was realized.
"The Empress also put the aristocracy against her by introducing several relaxations into Court etiquette which had up to her time been stiff and formal. Her relations with Bismarck, as is well known, were for many years strained, and on one occasion she made the remark that the tears he had caused her to shed 'would fill tumblers.' On the whole she was an excellent wife and mother. She was no doubt in some degree responsible for the admiration of England as a country and of the English as a people which is a marked feature of the Emperor's character."
This account is fairly correct in its estimation of the Empress Frederick's character and abilities, but it repeats a popular error in saying that German law lays down that no one can mount the Prussian throne if he is afflicted with a mortal sickness. There is no "German law" on the subject, and the law intended to be referred to is the so-called "house-law," which, as in the case of other German noble families, regulates the domestic concerns of the House of Hohenzollern. Bismarck disposes of the assertion that a Hohenzollern prince mortally stricken is not capable of succession as a "fable," and adds that the Constitution, too, contains no stipulation of the sort. The influence of his mother on the Emperor's character did not extend beyond his childhood, while probably the only natural dispositions he inherited from her were his strength of will and his appreciation of classical art and music. Many of her political ideas were diametrically opposed to those of her son. Her love of art made her pro-French, and her visit to Paris, it will be remembered, not being made incognito, led to international unpleasantness, originating in the foolish Chauvinism of some leading French painters whose ateliers she desired to inspect. She believed in a homogeneous German Empire without any federation of kingdoms and states, advocated a Constitution for Russia, and was satisfied that the common sense of a people outweighed its ignorance and stupidity.
The Emperor has four sisters and a brother. The sisters are Charlotte,
born in 1860, and married to the Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Meiningen;
Victoria, born in 1866, and married to Prince Adolphus of
Schaumberg-Lippe; Sophie, born in 1870, and married to King
Constantine, of Greece; and Margarete, born in 1872, and married to
Prince Friederich Karl of Hessen.
The Emperor's only brother, Prince Henry of Prussia, was born in 1862, and is married to Princess Irene of Hessen. He is probably the most popular Hohenzollern to-day. He adopted the navy as a profession and devotes himself to its duties, taking no part in politics. Like the Emperor himself and the Emperor's heir, the Crown Prince, he is a great promoter of sport, and while a fair golfer (with a handicap of 14) and tennis player, gives much of his leisure to the encouragement of the automobile and other industries. Every Hohenzollern is supposed to learn a handicraft. The Emperor did not, owing to his shortened left