o made Prussia Prussia, and voluntarily gave
Prussians certain political rights, and not the citizens of Prussia
who stormed the battlements of equal rights and made a treaty with
their sovereign.

The King of Prussia is the largest landholder and the richest citizen
of Prussia. We have seen what he expects of his navy and of his army.
Speaking on the 6th of September, 1894, he says: "Gentlemen,
opposition on the part of the Prussian nobility to their King is a
monstrosity."

But arid details are not history, and in this connection let us have
done with them. I have documented this chapter with dates and
quotations because the situation politically, is so far away from the
experience or knowledge of the American, that he must be given certain
facts to assist his imagination in making a true picture. I have done
this, too, that the Kaiser may have his real background when we
undertake to place him understandingly in the modern world. Here we
have patriarchal rule still strong and still undoubting, coupled with
the most successful social legislation, the most successful state
control of railways, mines, and other enterprises; and a progress
commercial and industrial during the last quarter of a century, second
to none.

This ruler believes it to be essentially a part of his business to be
a Lorenzo de Medici to his people in art; their high priest in
religion; their envoy extraordinary to foreign peoples; their watchful
father and friend in legislation dealing with their daily lives; their
war-lord, and their best example in all that concerns domestic
happiness and patriotic citizenship. He fulfils the words of the old
German chronicle which reads: "Merito a nobis nostrisque posteris
pater patriae appelatur quia erat egregius defensor et fortissimus
propugnator nihili pendens vitam suam contra omnia adversa propter
justitiam opponere."

If history is not altogether valueless in its description of symptoms,
the Germans are of a softer mould than some of us, more malleable,
rather tempted to imitate than led by self-confidence to trust to
their own ideals, and less hard in confronting the demands of other
peoples, that they should accept absorption by them.

Spurned and disdained by Louis XIV, they fawned upon him, built
palaces like his, dressed like his courtiers, wrote and spoke his
language, copied his literary models, and even bored themselves with
mistresses because this was the fashion at Versailles. He stole