on of what the Emperor had in
mind, came the famous Zimmermann note, the instructions to the
German Minister in Mexico to align both Japan and Mexico against
us when we entered the war against Germany!

Plotting and intriguing for power and mastery! Such is the
business of absolute rulers.

I believe that had the old Austrian Kaiser lived a little while
longer, the prolongation of his life would have been most
disastrous both for Austria and Hungary. I believe after the
death of Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo and after a year of war the
German Emperor and autocracy were brooding over a plan according
to which, on the death of Francis Joseph, the successor should be
allowed to rule only as King or Grand-Duke of Austria, the title
of Emperor of Austria to disappear and German Princes to be
placed upon the thrones of Hungary and of a new kingdom of
Bohemia. These and the king or grand-duke of Austria were to be
subject-monarchs under the German Kaiser, who was thus to revive
an empire, if not greater, at least more powerful, than the
empires of Charlemagne and of Charles the Fifth. Many public
utterances of the German Kaiser show that trend of mind.

Emperor William deliberately wrote and published, for instance,
such a statement as this: "From childhood I have been influenced
by five men, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Theodoric II,
Frederick the Great and Napoleon. Each of these men dreamed a
dream of world empire. They failed. I have dreamed a dream of
German world empire and my mailed fist shall succeed."

Could any declaration of a life's ambition be more explicit? It
seems impossible for human ambition to stand still. Either a man
loses all stimulus of self and becomes as spiritless as a fagged
animal or ambition drives him always on--he is never content with
any success achieved. The millionaire to whom the first million,
when he was a boy, seemed the extreme limit of human wealth and
desire, presses on insatiably with the first million in his
pocket, more restless, more dissatisfied, than the hungry
farmer's boy who first carries his ambitions to the great city.

When these zealous, scheming men gain the power of kingship, they
usually bring disaster to their country. Their subjects find no
compensation in the personal ambitions which hurry a nation into
the miseries of war. Better Charles II, dallying with his
ringletted mistresses, than an Alexander the Great; better Henry
the Fourth of France, the "eve