ies be excepted, Germany for over forty
years, thanks largely to the Emperor, has enjoyed the advantages of
peace.

From the pictorial and sensational point of view continuous peace is a
drawback for the biographer no less than for the historian. What would
history be without war?--almost inconceivable; since wars, not peace,
are the principal materials with which it deals and supply it with
most of its vitality and interest--must it also be admitted, its
charm? For what are Hannibal or Napoleon or Frederick the Great
remembered?--for their wars, and little else. Shakespeare has it
that--

"Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues
We write in water."

Who, asks Heine, can name the artist who designed the cathedral of
Cologne? In this regard the biographer of an emperor is almost as
dependent as the historian.

The biography of an emperor, again, must be to a large extent, the
history of his reign, and in no case is this more true than in that of
Emperor William. But he has been closely identified with every event
of general importance to the world since he mounted the throne, and
the world's attention has been fastened without intermission on his
words and conduct. The rise of the modern German Empire is the salient
fact of the world's history for the last half-century, and accordingly
only from this broader point of view will the Emperor's future
biographer, or the historian of the future, be able to do him or his
Empire justice.

Lastly, another difficulty, if one may call it so, experienced equally
by the biographer and the historian, is the fact that the life of the
Emperor has been blameless from the moral standpoint. On two or three
occasions early in the reign accounts were published of scandals at
the Court. They may not have been wholly baseless, but none of them
directly involved the Emperor, or even raised a doubt as to his
respectability or reputation. Take from history--or from biography for
that matter--the vices of those it treats of, and one-third, perhaps
one-half, of its "human interest" disappears.

In the circumstances, therefore, all the writer need add is that he
has done the best he could. He has ignored, certainly, at two or three
stages of his narration, the demands of strict chronological
succession; but if so, it has been to describe some of the more
important events of the reign in their totality. He has also felt it
necessary, as writing for English readers of a cou