them.
Frederick William II. (1786-1797), the successor of the great realist
and woman-hater, was a polygamist and a mystic. Frederick William III.
(1797-1840) was an exemplary husband and a well-meaning, business-like
bourgeois. He was succeeded by Frederick William IV. (1840-1861), a
romanticist and a dreamer who ended in madness. William I. (1861-1888)
was an honest, straightforward, methodical, reasonable,
self-controlled soldier. Frederick III. was an idealist, and, like
Frederick the Great, a lover of literature and art. William II. has
bewildered the world as a versatile and omniscient dilettante,
war-lord and peacemaker, Mohammedan and Christian--always a comedian,
yet always in earnest. And we all know how the heir to the throne is
the reverse of the Kaiser, and how this Crown Prince, with the fancies
of a degenerate, has deserved to be called the "Clown Prince."

It is therefore apparent that if we analyze the characteristics of
every one of the nine dynasts who have reigned in Prussia since the
Great Elector for the last two hundred and fifty years, we do not find
one single ruler who resembles his predecessor or his successor. Yet
all these Hohenzollerns, whether capable or incapable, whether mad,
half-mad, or sane, whether profligate or domesticated, whether
extravagant or miserly, have certain common traits. They have all been
inspired with the same dynastic policy. When we consider the
individual variations from the family type, there can be here no
question of physical heredity, like the lip of the Habsburg or the
tainted blood of the Spanish Bourbons. It is a question of political
environment, a question of dynastic tradition. Indeed, we must
carefully study that Hohenzollern family tradition of politics if we
want to grasp the full significance of the word, if we wish to
understand how such a dynastic tradition may become a formidable power
to European history. Maeterlinck in his "Life of the Bee" has an
eloquent and profound chapter on the "Spirit of the Hive." In the
domestic and international policy of the Prussian State, in the
Hohenzollern dynastic tradition, we discover such a collective spirit,
the "Spirit of the Prussian Hive," the evil spirit of war mania and
megalomania, the treachery, the brutality, the greed, and, above all,
the predatory instinct dignified into the name of _Real Politik_. And
Europe will only enjoy permanent peace and security if she succeeds in
destroying that Hohenzolle