thriving and most lucrative export trade in princelings. One
Hohenzollern Prince ruling in Roumania for thirty years asserted
German influence in that Latin country. Another Hohenzollern Prince
ruling in Athens, nicknamed "Tino" by his affectionate relative the
Kaiser, for three years stultified the will of his people, who were
determined to join the cause of the Allies. Still another German
Prince ruling in Sofia, who five years ago was mainly responsible for
the horrors of the second Balkan War, compelled the Bulgarian nation
to betray the cause of Russia, to whom the Bulgarian people owe their
political existence and liberation from the yoke of the Turk.

Even yet public opinion does not realize to what an extent European
Princes in the past have been made in Germany. We speak of the Royal
House of Denmark as a Danish House. The Danish House is in real fact
the German dynasty of Oldenburg. We speak of the House of Romanov as a
Russian dynasty. And it is true that the founder of the dynasty,
Michael Romanov, the son of Philarete, Archbishop of Moscow and
Patriarch of all the Russias, was a typical Muscovite, and was called
to the throne in 1611, in troubled times, by the unanimous voice of
the people. But, as all the Czars of Russia for two hundred years only
married German Princesses, _without one single exception_, the
Russian dynasty had become in fact a German dynasty. So far as mere
heredity is concerned, Nicholas II., through the German marriages of
all his ancestors, is of German stock to the extent of sixty-three
sixty-fourths, and of Russian stock only in the proportion of one
sixty-fourth.

II.--THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE HOHENZOLLERN DYNASTY.

Of all the German dynasties seated on the thrones of Europe, the
Hohenzollern stand out, not merely as the most powerful, but also by
far the most striking and the most interesting. The Hohenzollern are
as unique in the history of royalty as the Rothschilds are unique in
the history of finance. The history of other dynasties has been
largely a history of Court scandal and intrigue, providing
inexhaustible material to the petty gossip of Court chroniclers. We
are all familiar with the amorous episodes of Louis XIV. and Louis
XV., with the mysteries of the Grand and Petit Trianon and of the Parc
aux Cerfs, with Madame de Maintenon and Madame de Montespan, with
Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry, that beautiful courtesan who
on the scaffold so pathetically asked t