wholly one's self. The German
Emperor is unhampered, as is no other ruler, by considerations of
popular favor; and at the same time he directs and influences not
Russian peasants, nor Turkish slaves, but an instructed, enlightened,
and ambitious people. This environment is unique in the world to-day,
and the Germans as a whole seem to consider their ruler a valuable
asset, despite occasional vagaries that bring down their own and
foreign criticism upon him.

Here we have a versatile and vigorous personality with no shadow of a
stain upon his character, and with no question upon the part of his
bitterest enemy of the honesty of his intentions, or of his devotion
to his country's interests. So far as he has been assailed abroad, it
is on the score that he has made his country so powerful in the last
twenty-five years that Germany is a menace to other powers; so far as
he has been criticised at home it is on the score of his
indiscretions.

It is of prime importance, therefore, both to glance at the progress
of Germany and to examine these so-called indiscretions. Throughout
these chapters will be found facts and figures dealing with the fairy-like
change which has taken place in Germany since my own student
days. I can remember when a chimney was a rare sight. Now there are
almost as many manufacturing towns as then there were chimneys.
Leipzig was a big country town, Pforzheim, Chemnitz, Oschatz,
Elberfeld, Riessa, Kiel, Essen, Rheinhausen, and their armies of
laborers, and their millions of output, were mere shadows of what they
are now.

In 1873, when Bismarck began his attempts at railway legislation,
Germany was divided into sixty-three "railway provinces," and there
were fifteen hundred different tariffs, and it is to be remembered
that it was only as late as 1882 that the state system of railways at
last triumphed in Prussia. In only ten years the railway trackage has
increased from 49,041 to 52,216 miles; the number of locomotives from
18,291 to 26,612; freight-cars from 398,000 to 558,000; the passengers
carried from 804,000,000 to 1,457,000,000; and the tons of freight
carried from 341,000,000 tons to 519,000,000 tons. In Prussia alone
there are 1,000,000 more horses, 1,000,000 more beef cattle, and
10,000,000 more pigs. The total production of beet sugar in the world
approximates 7,000,000 tons; of this amount Germany produces 2,500,000
tons. Great Britain consumes more sugar per head of the population
tha