service to his obligations becomes of the highest and most
sacred importance.

We should not allow our democratic prejudices to stifle our
understanding in such matters. We are trying to get clearly in
perspective a ruler, who claims to rule in obedience to no mandates
from the people, but in obedience to God. We could not be ruled by
such a one in America; and in England such a ruler would be deemed
unconstitutional. It is elementary, but necessary to repeat, that we
are writing of Germany and the Germans, and of their history,
traditions, and political methods. We are making no defence of either
the German Emperor or the German people; neither are we occupying an
American pulpit to preach to them the superiority of other methods
than their own. My sole task is to make clear the German situation,
and not by any means to set up my own or my countrymen's standards for
their adoption. I am not searching for that paltry and ephemeral
profit that comes from finding opportunities to laugh or to sneer. I
am seeking for the German successes, and they are many, and for the
reasons for them, and for the lessons that we may learn from them. Any
other aim in writing of another people is ignoble.

This attitude of the ruler will be as incomprehensible to the
democratic citizen as alchemy, but, in order to draw anything like
true inferences or useful deductions, in order to understand the
situation and to get a true likeness of the ruler, one must take this
utterly unfamiliar and to us incomprehensible claim into
consideration, and acknowledge its existence whether we admit the
claim as justifiable or not. The relation of such a ruler to his
people is like that of a Catholic bishop to his flock. The contract is
not one made with hands, but is an inalienable right on the one hand,
and an undisseverable tie upon the other. Bismarck wrote on this
subject: "Fuer mich sind die Worte, 'von Gottes Gnaden,' welche
christliche Herrscher ihrem Namen beifuegen, kein leerer Schall,
sondern ich sehe darin das Bekenntniss, des Fuersten das Scepter was
ihnen Gott verliehen hat, nur nach Gottes Willen auf Erden fuehren
wollen."

On several occasions the German Emperor has made it unmistakably clear
that this is his view of the origin and sanctity of his
responsibilities. "If we have been able to accomplish what has been
accomplished, it is due above all things to the fact that our house
possesses a tradition by virtue of which we consider that