nt of German life, the shadow cast is that
of Germany's Emperor.

This is not said because it is pleasing to whomsoever it may be, for
in Germany, and in much of the world outside Germany, this situation
is looked upon as unfavorable, and even deplorable; and certainly no
American can look upon it with equanimity, for it is of the essence of
his Americanism to distrust it. It is, however, so much a fact that to
neglect a discussion of this personality would be to leave even so
slight a sketch of Germany as this, hopelessly lop-sided. He so
pervades German life that to write of the Germany of the last twenty-five
years without attempting to describe William the Second, German
Emperor, would be to leave every question, institution, and problem of
the country without its master-key.

In other chapters dealing more particularly with the political
development of Germany, and with the salient characteristics, mental
and moral, of the people, we shall see how it has come about, that one
man can thus impregnate a whole nation of sixty-five millions with his
own aims and ambitions, to such an extent, that they may be said, so
to speak, to live their political, social, martial, religious, and
even their industrial, life in him. It is a phenomenon of personality
that exists nowhere else in the world to-day, and on so large a scale
and among so enlightened a people, perhaps never before in history.

Nothing has made scientific accuracy in dealing with the most
interesting and most important factors in the world, so utterly
inaccurate and misleading, as those infallibly accurate and impersonal
agents, electricity and the sun. If one were to judge a man by his
photographs, and the gossip of the press, one would be sure to know
nothing more valuable about him than that his mustache is brushed up,
and that his brows are permanently lowering. Personality is so evasive
that one may count upon it that when a machine says "There it is!"
then there it is not! You will have everything that is patent and
nothing that is pertinent.

We are forever talking and writing about the smallness of the world,
of how much better we know one another, and of how much more we should
love one another, now that we flash photographs and messages to and
fro, at a speed of leagues a second. Nothing could be more futile and
foolish. These things have emphasized our differences, they have done
nothing to realize our likeness to one another. We are as far from