r and his
Government are so insistent on the doctrine of Heaven-granted
sovereignty, so ready to support more or less autocratic monarchies in
other parts of the world, and so sensitive to popular movements like
Anarchism and Nihilism in Russia, or the always-smouldering Polish
agitation and the propaganda of the Social Democracy in Germany. When
King Frederick William IV said to his assembled generals at Potsdam a
week after the "March Days," "Never have I felt more free or more
secure than when under the protection of my burghers," his words were
drowned in the buzz of murmurs and the angry clanking of swords. The
Emperor to-day might, or might not, endorse the words of his ancestor.
Most probably he would not; for, judging by his speeches, his care for
the army, the military state with which he surrounds himself, and his
habitual appearance in uniform, he, though in truth far more a civil
monarch than the War Lord foreign writers delight in painting him, is
evidently determined to rely only on his soldiers for every
eventuality at home as well as abroad.

Perhaps the best German authorities on Bismarck's falling-out with the
young Emperor are the statements regarding it to be found in the
memoranda supplied at the time by Prince Bismarck himself to Dr.
Moritz Busch; the Memoirs of Prince Hohenlohe-Schillingsfuerst,
subsequently Imperial Chancellor; and the monograph on Bismarck by Dr.
Hans Blum, one of the Chancellor's confidants. The memoranda supplied
to Busch make regrettably few references to the subject, beyond giving
the terms of the official resignation and some scanty addenda thereto;
but enough is said generally by Busch concerning Bismarck's
conversations to show that the Chancellor was deeply mortified by his
dismissal. Bismarck indeed expressly denies this in a conversational
statement quoted by an able Bismarckian writer of our own time, Dr.
Paul Liman; but in view of subsequent events and statements the denial
can hardly be taken as sincere. The passage referred to is as
follows:--

"I bear no grudge against my young master, who is fiery and
lively. He wishes to make all men happy, and that is very
natural at his age. I, for my part, believe perhaps less in
this possibility, and have told him so too. It is very
natural that a mentor like myself does not please him, and
that he therefore rejects my advice. An old carthorse and a
young courser go ill in harness togeth