orld things that are important for it to
know, and at the same time, it is not ill-natured to suspect, enhance
their own reputation with their contemporaries or with posterity. The
multitudinous tribe of anecdote inventors and retailers must also be
taken into account. In our own day there is still another source of
information, which, agreeably or odiously according to the temperament
of the reader, keeps us in touch with courts and what goes on
there--the periodical press; while afar off in the future one can
imagine the historian bent over his desk, surrounded by books and
knee-deep in newspapers, selecting and weighing events, studying
characters, developing personalities, and passing what he hopes may be
a final judgment on the court and period he is considering.

For a study of the Emperor's life, as it passes in his Court, a large
number of works are available, but not many that can be described as
authoritative or reliable. Among the latter, however, may be placed
Moritz Busch's "Bismarck: Some Secret Pages of His History," three
volumes that make Busch almost as interesting to the reader as his
subject; Bismarck's own "Gedanke und Erinnerungen," which is chiefly
of a political nature; and the "Memorabilia of Prince Chlodwig
Hohenlohe-Schillingsfuerst," who was for several years Statthalter of
Alsace-Lorraine and subsequently became Imperial Chancellor in
succession to General von Caprivi. These works, with the collections
of the Emperor's speeches and the speeches and interviews of
Chancellor Prince von Buelow, may be ranked in the category of serious
and authentic contributions to the Court history of the period they
cover. Then there are several German descriptions of the Court,
reliable enough in their way which is a dull one, to those who are not
impassioned monarchists or hide-bound bureaucrats. In the category of
works by unscrupulous writers that entitled "The Private Lives of
William II and His Consort," by a lady-in-waiting to the Empress from
1888 to 1898, easily takes first place. Certainly it gives a lively
and often entertaining insight into the domestic life of the palace,
but it is so clearly informed by spite that it is impossible to
distinguish what is true in it from what is false or misrepresented.
Finally, for the closer study of individual events and the impressions
they made at the time of their happening, the daily press can be
consulted. For the Bismarck period the biography of Hans Blum