German Emperor has mixed the two, after the manner of a
prentice-hand. His organ, the _Cologne Gazette_, with all the honeyed
adulation of a suddenly converted opponent, [2] has called this mixture
"Social Monarchism." Therefore, it seems, the German Emperor is
neither a constitutional sovereign nor a monarch by divine right. He
has restored Caesarism of the Roman type, clinging at the same time to
the principle of divine right--and the result is our "Social Monarch"!

Rushing headlong on the path of reform--full steam ahead, as he puts
it--he is prepared to change the past, present and future in order to
give happiness to his own subjects. But France is likely to pay for
all this; sooner or later some new rescript will tell us that the
valley of tribulation is our portion and inheritance.

It is one of his ambitions to put an end to class warfare in Germany.
To this end he begins, with his usual tact, by denouncing the
capitalists (that is to say; the wealth of the middle class) to the
workers, and then holds up the scandalous luxury of the aristocracy in
the army to the contempt of the bourgeois.

One of his most brilliant and at the same time most futile efforts, is
his rescript on the subject of the shortage of officers for the army.
As the army itself is steadily increasing every day, it should have
been easy in each regiment for him, gradually and quite quietly, to
increase the number of officers drawn from the middle-class; indeed,
the change would have practically effected itself, for the Minister of
War had a hundred-and-one means of bringing it about. But this
rescript has put a check on what might otherwise have been a natural
process of change, and unless William now settles matters with a high
hand, it will cease. In every regiment the aristocracy provides the
great majority of officers; bourgeois candidates for admission to the
service are liable to be black-balled, just as they might be at any
club; it is now safe to predict that they will henceforward be regarded
with less favour than ever, and that generals, colonels, majors and the
rest will form up into a solid phalanx, to prevent the Emperor's
platonic _proteges_ from getting in.

William II appeals to the higher ranks of officers, who are tradition
personified, to put an end to tradition. It is really wonderful what a
genius he has for exciting cupidity in one class and resistance in the
other. And he has done the same thing with the wor