ll have no more to say in the matter than you and I.

III THE INDISCREET

The casual observer of life in England would find himself forced to
write of sport, even as in India he would write of caste, as in
America he would note the undue emphasis laid upon politics. In
Germany, wherever he turns, whether it be to look at the army, to
inquire about the navy, to study the constitution, or to disentangle
the web of present-day political strife; to read the figures of
commercial and industrial progress, or the results of social
legislation; to look on at the Germans at play during their yachting
week at Kiel, or their rowing contests at Frankfort, he finds himself
face to face with the Emperor.

The student visits Berlin, or Potsdam, or Wilhelmshoehe; or with a long
stride finds himself on the docks at Hamburg or Bremen, or beside the
Kiel Canal, or in Kiel harbor facing a fleet of war-ships; or he lifts
his eyes into the air to see a dirigible balloon returning from a
voyage of two hundred and fifty miles toward London over the North
Sea, and the Emperor is there. Is it the palace hidden in its
shrubbery in the country; is it the clean, broad streets and
decorations of the capital; is it a discussion of domestic politics,
or a question of foreign politics, the Emperor's hand is there. His
opinion, his influence, what he has said or has not said, are
inextricably interwoven with the woof and web of German life.

We may like him or dislike him, approve or disapprove, rejoice in
autocracy or abominate it, admire the far-reaching discipline, or
regret the iron mould in which much of German life is encased, but for
the moment all this is beside the mark. Here is a man who in a quarter
of a century has so grown into the life of a nation, the most powerful
on the continent, and one of the three most powerful in the world,
that when you touch it anywhere you touch him, and when you think of
it from any angle of thought, or describe it from any point of view,
you find yourself including him.

Personally, I should have been glad to leave this chapter unwritten. I
have no taste for the discussion and analysis of living persons, even
when they are of such historic and social importance, and of such
magnitude, that I am thus given the proverbial license of the cat. But
to write about Germany without writing about the Emperor is as
impossible as to jump away from one's own shadow. When the sun is
behind any phase or departme