erman peoples together, he became an authority in Europe
and laid the corner-stone of the present Empire--after sketching all
this, the Emperor continues:

"How is this wonderful success of the house of Hohenzollern
to be explained? Solely in this way, that every prince of
the House is conscious from the beginning that he is only an
earthly vicegerent, who must give an account of his labour
to a higher King and Master, and show that he has been a
faithful executor of the high commands laid upon him."

One finds exactly the same idea expressed three months later when
talking to his "Men of Brandenburg." "You know well," he reminded
them,

"that I regard my whole position and my task as laid on me
by Heaven, and that I am appointed by a Higher Power to whom
I must later render an account. Accordingly I can assure you
that not a morning or evening passes without a prayer for my
people and a special thought for my Mark Brandenburg."

To the Anglo-Saxon understanding, of course, the theory of divine
right has long appeared untenable, obsolete, and, as Macaulay says,
absurd. Many people to-day would go farther and argue that there is no
such thing as a divine right at all, since "rights" are a purely human
idea, possibly a purely legal one. But it is at least doubtful that
the Emperor uses the expression "von Gottes Gnaden" in a sense exactly
coterminous with that of "divine right" as used by Lord Macaulay and
later Anglo-Saxon writers and speakers. The latter, when dealing with
things German, not unfrequently fall into the error of mistranslation
and are thus at times responsible for national misunderstandings. The
Italian saying, "_traduttore, tradittore_," is the expression of a
fact too seldom recognized, especially by those whose business it is
to interpret, so to speak, one people to another. Language is as
mysterious and elusive a thing as aught connected with humanity, as
love, for example, or music; and it may be asserted with some degree
of confidence that among every people there are ideas current, and in
all departments--in law, society, art--which it is impossible exactly
to translate into the speech of other nations. The words used may be
the same, but the connotation, all the words imply and suggest, is,
perhaps in very important respects, different, and requires a
paraphrase, longer or shorter, to explain them. Take the word "false"
in English and "fa