THE COURT OF THE EMPEROR

While the ex-Chancellor is bitterly meditating on the unreliability and ingratitude of princes, yet having in his heart, as the records clearly show, the loyal sentiments of a Cardinal Wolsey towards his royal master, even though that master had cast him off, we may be allowed to pause awhile in order to give some account of the Court of which the Emperor now became the centre and pivot.

Human imagination, in its worship of force as the source of ability to achieve the ends of ambition and desire, very early conceived the courts of kings as fairylands of power, wealth, luxury, and magnificence in a word, of happiness. The same imagination represents the Almighty, whose true nature no one knows, as a monarch in the bright court of heaven, and his great antagonist, Satan, who stands for the king of evil, is enthroned by it amid the shades of hell. The fiction that courts are a species of earthly paradise is still kept up for the entertainment of children; while the adult, whom the annals of all countries has made familiar with a long record of monarchs, bad as well as good, is disposed to regard them as beneficial or otherwise to a country according to the character and conduct of the occupant of the throne, and to believe that they are at least as liable to produce examples of vice and hypocrisy as of virtue and honesty.

The court of the German Emperor in this connexion need not fear comparison with any court described in history. True, courts all over the world have improved wonderfully of recent years. Their monarchs are more enlightened, they are frequented by a very different type of man and woman from the courts of former times, their morale and working are more closely scrutinized and more generally subjected to criticism, and they are occupied with a more public and less selfish order of considerations. The Court of the Emperor is, so far as can be known to a lynx-eyed and not always charitably thinking public, singularly free from the vices and failings the atmosphere of former courts was wont to foster. There is at all times, no doubt, the competition of politicians for influence and power acting and reacting on the Court and its frequenters, but of scandal at the Court of Berlin there has been none that could be fairly said to involve the Emperor or his family. Dame Gossip, of course, busied herself with the Emperor in his youth, but whatever truth she then uttered and it is probably extremely little on this head, there is no question that from the day he mounted the throne his Court and that of the Empress has been a model for all institutions of the kind.

The life of courts, the personages who play leading parts in them, their wealth and luxury, and the currents of social, amorous, and political intrigue which are supposed to course through them have in all countries and in all ages strongly appealed to writers, fanciful and serious. Perhaps one-third of the prose and poetic literature of every country deals, directly or indirectly, with the subject, and determines in no small degree the character of its rising generations. The great architects of romance, depicting for us life in high places, and often nobly idealizing it, or working the facts of history into the web of their imaginings and thus pleasantly combining fact with fiction, aim at elevating, not at debasing, the mind of the reader. A second valuable source of information on the topic are the memoirs of those who have set down their observations and recorded experiences made in the courts to which they had access. Among this class, however, are to be found unscrupulous as well as conscientious authors, the former obviously cherishing some personal grievance or as obviously actuated by malice, while the latter are usually moved by an honest desire to tell the world 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 is of exceptional value.

What may be termed the anecdotic literature of the Court is particularly rich and trivial, and this is only to be expected in a country where the monarchy and its representative are so forcibly and constantly brought home to the people’s consciousness. Yet it has its uses, and is referred to, though sparingly, in the present work. “The Emperor as Father of a Family,” “The Emperor and His Daughter’s Uniform,” “The Amiable Grandfather,” “The Emperor as Husband,” “The Emperor as Card Player,” “How the Emperor’s Family is Photographed,” “What does the Emperor’s Kitchen Look Like,” “Adieu, Auguste” ("Auguste” is the Empress), “The English Lord and the Emperor’s Cigarettes,” “When My Wife Makes You a Sandwich,” “What the Emperor Reads,” “The Emperor’s Handwriting,” “Can the Emperor Vote?” (the answer is, opinions differ), “Washing Day at the Emperor’s,” “The Emperor and the Empress at Tennis,” “Emperor and Auto,” are the sort of matters dealt with. Literature of this kind is beyond question intensely interesting to vast numbers of people, but helps very little towards understanding a singularly complex human being placed in a high and extraordinarily responsible position.

Strictly speaking, there is no Imperial Court in Germany, since the King of Prussia, in accordance with the Imperial Constitution, always succeeds to the imperial throne, and therefore officially the Court is that of the King of Prussia only. The distinction is emphasized by the fact that the Court is independent of the Empire as regards its administration and finance. It is a state within a state, an imperium in imperio. In all that pertains to it the Emperor is absolute ruler and his executive is a special Ministry. At the same time it is almost needless to add that the Court of Berlin is practically that of the Empire. It is this character, apart from Prussia’s size and importance, that distinguishes it from other courts in Germany and reduces them to comparative insignificance in foreign, though by no means in German, consideration.

The Court of the Empire and Prussia and the same thing may be said of the various other courts in Germany engages popular interest and attention to a much larger extent than is the case in England. The fact is almost wholly due to the nature of the monarchy and of its relations to the people. In England a great portion of the popular attention is concentrated on Parliament and the fortunes of its two great political parties. The attention given to the Court and its doings is not of the same general and permanent character, but is intermittent according to the occasion. The Englishman feels deep and abiding popular interest at all times in Parliament, whether in session or not, because it represents the people and is, in fact, and for hundreds of years has been, the Government.

The reverse may fairly be said to be the case in Germany. In Germany popular attention has been from early times concentrated on the monarch, his personality, sayings and doings, since in his hands lay government power and patronage. Monarchy of a more or less absolute character was accepted by the people, not only in Germany but all over the Continent, as the normal and desirable, perhaps the inevitable, state of things; and it is only since the French Revolution that parliaments after the English pattern, that is by two chambers elected by popular vote, yet in many important respects widely differing from it, were demanded by the people or finally established. Up to comparatively recent times the monarch in Prussia was an absolute ruler. Frederick William IV, after the events of 1848, was compelled to grant Prussia a Constitution which explicitly defined the respective rights of the Crown and the people in the sphere of politics; and the Imperial Constitution, drawn up on the formation of the modern Empire, did the same thing as regards the Emperor and the people of the Empire; but neither Constitution altered the nature of the monarchy in the direction of giving governing power to the people. Both secured the people legislative, but not governing power. Government in the Empire and Prussia remains, as of old, an appanage, so to speak, of the Court, and the fact of course tends to concentrate attention on the Court.

It has been said that the Court is a state within a state, an imperium in imperio. In this state, within Prussia or within the Empire, it is the same thing for our purpose, there are two main departments, that of the Lord Chamberlain (Oberstkammeramt) and that of the Master of the Household (Ministerium des Koeniglichen Hauses). The first deals with all questions of court etiquette, court ceremonial, court mourning, precedence, superintendence of the courts of the Emperor’s sons and near relatives, and of all Prussian court offices. The second deals with the personal affairs of the Emperor and his sons, the domestic administration of the palace, the management of the Crown estates and castles, and is the tribunal that decides all Hohenzollern differences and disputes that are not subject to the ordinary legal tribunals. Connected with this Ministry are the Herald’s office and the Court Archives office. The chief Court officials include, beside the Lord Chamberlain and the Master of the Household, a Chief Court Marshal. The Master of the Household is also Chief Master of Ceremonies, with a Deputy Master of Ceremonies who is also Introducer of Ambassadors, two Court Marshals, a Captain of the Palace Guards, a Court Chaplain, Court Physician, an Intendant in charge of the royal theatres, a Master of the Horse who has charge of the royal stables, a House Marshal, and a Master of the Kitchen. All these officials are princes (Fuerst) or counts (Graf), with the title Highness (Durchlaucht) or Excellency.

Court officials also include the various nobles in charge of the royal palaces, castles, and hunting lodges at Potsdam, Charlottenburg, Breslau, Stettin, Marienburg, Posen, Letzlingen, Hohkoenigsberg, Homberg von der Hoehe, Springe, Hubertusstock, Rominten, Korfu (the “Achilleion"), Wiesbaden, Koenigsberg, etc., to the number of thirty or more. The Empress has her own Court officials, including a Mistress of the Robes and Ladies of the Bedchamber, also with the title of Excellency, the Ladies being chosen from the most aristocratic families of Germany. The Empress has her own Master of the Household, physician, treasurer, and so on. Similarly with the households of the Crown Prince, other royal princes and the Emperor’s near relatives.

Every order the Emperor gives that is not of a purely domestic kind passes through one of his three cabinets the Civil Cabinet, the Military Cabinet, or the Marine Cabinet. The cost of the first, with its chief, who receives L1,000 a year, and half a dozen subordinate officials on salaries of L200 to L350, is budgeted at about L10,000 a year. The Military Cabinet is a much larger establishment, having several departments and a staff of half a hundred councillors and clerks. The Naval Cabinet, on the other hand, is composed of only three upper officials and five clerks. The Emperor’s “civil list” is returned in the Budget as L860,000 roughly. His entire annual revenue does not exceed L1,000,000. Out of this he has to pay the expenses of his married sons’ households and make large contributions to public charities. He was left, however, a very considerable sum of money by the Emperor William. The Crown Prince, as such, receives a grant of L20,000 a year, chiefly derived from the royal domain of Oels in Silesia. Like all fathers of large families, the Emperor has been more than once heard to complain that he finds it difficult to make both ends meet.

The Emperor’s staff of adjutants are exceptionally useful and important people. At their head is the chief of the Emperor’s Military Cabinet. Not less important are the members of the Emperor’s Marine Cabinet, consisting of admirals, vice-admirals, and wing-admirals. The personal adjutants divide the day and night service between them, so that there may always be three adjutants at the Emperor’s immediate disposal. The adjutant announces Ministers or other visitors to the Emperor, telegraphs to say that His Majesty has an hour or an hour and a half at his disposal at such-and-such a time, or intimates that an audience of half an hour can be given in the train between two given points. They act as living memorandum books, knock at the Emperor’s door to announce that it is time for him to go to this or that appointment, remind him that a congratulatory telegram on some one’s seventieth birthday or other jubilee has to be sent, or perhaps whispers that Her Majesty the Empress wishes to see him. All the Emperor’s correspondence passes through their hands. They accompany the Emperor on his journeys and voyages, and when thus employed are usually invited to his table. The Emperor reads of some new book and tells an adjutant to order it, and the latter does so by communicating with the Civil Cabinet.

Court society in Berlin includes the German “higher” and “lower” nobility, with the exception of the so-called Fronde, who proudly absent themselves from it; the Ministers; the diplomatic corps; Court officials; and such members of the burghertum, or middle class, as hold offices which entitle them to attend court. The wives, however, of those in the last category are not “court-capable” on this account, nor is the middle class generally, nor even members of the Imperial or Prussian Parliaments as such. Members of Parliament are invited to the Court’s seasonal festivities, but as a rule only members of the Conservative parties or other supporters of the Government. The nobility, as in England, is hereditary or only nominated for life, and the hereditary nobility is divided into an upper and lower class. To the former belongs members of houses that were ruling when the modern Empire was established, and, while excluding the Emperor, who stands above them, includes sovereign houses and mediatized houses. Some of the ancient privileges of the nobility, such as exemption from taxation, and the right to certain high offices, have been abolished, but in practice the nobility still occupy the most important charges in the administration and in the army. The privileges of the mediatized princes consist of exemption from conscription, the enjoyment of the Principle called “equality of birth,” which prevents the burgher wife of a noble acquiring her husband’s rank, and the right to have their own “house law” for the regulation of family disputes and family affairs generally. No increase to the high nobility of Germany can accrue as no addition will ever be made to the once sovereign and mediatized families. With the exception of these houses the rest of the German nobility, hereditary and non-hereditary, is accounted as belonging to the lower nobility. That part of the German aristocracy who refuse to go to court, and are accordingly called by the name Fronde, first given to the opponents of Cardinal Mazarin, in the reign of Louis XIV, consist chiefly of a few old families of Prussian Poland, Hannover (the Guelphs), Brunswick, Nassau, Hessen, and other annexed German territories, and of some great Catholic houses in Bavaria and the Rhineland. Their dislike is directed not so much against the Empire as against Prussia. The Kulturkampf had the effect of setting a small number of ancient Prussian ultramontane families against the Government.

Not much that is complimentary can be said of the German aristocracy as a whole. “Serenissimus” is to-day as frequently the subject of bitter, if often humorous, caricature in the comic press as ever he was. A few of the class, like Prince Fuerstenberg, Prince Hohenlohe, Count Henkel-Donnersmarck and some others engage successfully in commerce; many are practical farmers and have done a good deal for agriculture; several are deputies to Parliament; but on the whole the foreigner gets the impression that the class as such contributes but a small percentage of what it might and should in the way of brains, industry, or example to the welfare and the progress of the Empire.

It is difficult to communicate an impression of the Court, whether at the Schloss in Berlin or the New Palace in Potsdam, and at the same time avoid the dry and dusty descriptions of the guide-books. If the reader is not in Berlin, let him imagine the fragment of a mediaeval town, situated on a river and fronted by a bridge; and on the bank of the river a dark, square, massive and weather-stained pile of four stories, with barred windows on the ground floor as defence against a possibly angry populace, and a sentry-box at each of its two lofty wrought-iron gates. It may be, as Baedeker informs us it is, a “handsome example of the German renaissance,” but to the foreigner it can as equally suggest a large and grimy barracks as the five-hundred-years-old palace of a long line of kings and emperors. And yet, to any one acquainted with the blood-stained annals of Prussian history, who knows something of the massive stone buildings about it and of the people who have inhabited them, who strolls through its interior divided into sombre squares, each with its cold and bare parade-ground, who reflects on the relations between king and people, closely identified by their historical associations, yet sundered by the feudal spirit which still keeps the Crown at a distance from the crowd, above all to the German versed in his country’s story how eloquently it speaks!

When one thinks of the Court of Berlin one should not forget that the New Palace, the Emperor’s residence at Potsdam, sixteen miles distant from the capital, is as much, and as important, a part of it as the royal palace in Berlin itself. The Emperor divides his time between them, the former, when he is not travelling, being his more permanent residence, and the latter only claiming his presence during the winter season and for periods of a day or so at other parts of the year, when occasion requires it. It is only during the six or eight weeks of the winter season that the Empress and her daughter, Princess Victoria Louise (now Duchess of Brunswick), go into residence at the Berlin royal palace. There is a railway between Potsdam and Berlin, but since the introduction of the motor-car the Emperor almost always uses that means of conveyance for the half-hour’s run between his Berlin and Potsdam palaces.

The other section of the Court, if Potsdam may be so described, is hardly less rich in memories than the old palace by the Spree. Indeed it is richer from the cosmopolitan point of view, for though Frederick the Great was born in the Berlin Schloss and spent some of his time there, it was at Potsdam that, when not campaigning, he may be said to have lived and died. To this day, for the foreigner, his personality still pervades the place, and that of the Emperor sinks, comparatively, into the background. The tourist who has pored over his Baedeker will learn that Potsdam has 53,000 inhabitants and is “charmingly situated” it depends on your temperament what the charm is, and to guide-book framers all tourists have the same temperament on an island in the Havel “which here expands into a series of lakes bounded by wooded hills.” He will learn that the old town-palace, which few visitors give a thought to, was built by the Great Elector, that Frederick the Great lived here in “richly decorated apartments with sumptuous furniture and noteworthy pictures by Pater, Lancret, and Pesne”; that it contains a cabinet in which the dining-table could be let up and down by means of a trap-door, and “where the King occasionally dined with friends without risk of being overheard by his attendants”; that the present Emperor, then Prince William, lived here with his young wife when he was still only a lieutenant. He will drive to the New Palace now old, for it was built by Frederick the Great in 1769, during the Seven Years’ War, at a cost of nearly half a million sterling and gaze with interest at the summer residence of the Emperor. If he is an American he may think of his multi-millionaire fellow-citizen, Cornelius Vanderbilt, who, when driving up to call on his erstwhile imperial schoolfellow and friend, was nearly shot at by a sentry for whom the name Vanderbilt was no “Open Sesame.” He will see before him a main building, seven hundred feet in length, three stories high, with the central portion surmounted by a dome, its chief façade looking towards a park. The whole, of course for Baedeker is talking forms an “imposing pile,” with “mediocre sculptures, but the effect of the weathered sandstone figures against the red brick is very pleasing.” Here the Emperor’s father, Frederick III, was born, lived as Crown Prince, reigned for ninety-nine days, and died. Here, too, are more “apartments of Frederick the Great,” with pictures by Rubens, including an “Adoration of the Magi,” a good example of Watteau and a portrait of Voltaire drawn by Frederick’s own hand. In the north wing are situated the present Emperor’s suite of chambers, where distinguished men of all countries have discussed almost every conceivable topic, political, social, religious, martial, artistic, financial, and commercial, with one of the most interesting talkers of his time. No bloody tragedy has defiled the palace, as did the murder of Lord Darnley at Holyrood, that of the Duke of Guise (Sir Walter Scott’s “Le Balafre”) the chateau of Blois, the execution of the Bourbon Duc d’Enghien the palace of Vincennes, or the murder of the boy princes the Tower of London. But bloodless tragedy, and exquisite comedy, and farce too, have doubtless had their hour within the walls. One such incident of the politico-tragic kind was that which passed only two years ago between the Emperor and his Imperial Chancellor, when Prince von Buelow went as deputy from the Federal Council, the Parliament, and the people to pray the Emperor to exercise more caution in his public, or semi-public statements; and the historian may possibly find another, and not without its touch of comedy, in the reception by the Emperor of the Chinese prince, who headed the “mission of atonement” for the murder of the Emperor’s Minister in Pekin during the Boxer troubles.

From the New Palace our foreigner will probably drive to the Marble Palace, which (for Baedeker is ever at one’s elbow with the facts) he will mark was built in 1796 by Frederick William II, who died here, was completed in 1845 by Frederick William IV, and was the residence of the present Emperor at the time of his accession.

But while our foreigner has been hurrying from one palace to another, with his mind in a fog of historical and topographical confusion if he is an American, half-hoping, half-expecting to meet the Emperor or Empress and secure a bow from one or other, or why not? one of William’s well-known vigorous poignées de main, there is always one thought predominant in his mind Sans Souci. That is the real object of his quest, the main attraction that has brought him, all unconscious of it, to Berlin, and not the laudable, but wholly mistaken efforts of the “Society for the Promotion of Tourist Traffic,” which seeks to lure the moneyed and reluctant foreigner to the German capital. Our foreigner enters the Park of Sans Souci and his spirit is at rest. Now he knows where he really is not in the wonderful new German Empire, not in modern Berlin with its splendid and to him unspeaking streets, its garish “night-life,” its faultily-faultless municipal propriety, not in Potsdam, “the true cradle of the Prussian army,” as Baedeker, deviating for an instant into metaphor, describes it, but simply in Sans Souci. He is now no longer in the twentieth century, but the eighteenth one hundred and fifty years ago or more in Frederick’s day, the period of pigtails, of giant grenadiers in the old-time blue and red coats, the high and fantastic shako made of metal and tapering to a point, of three-cornered hats resting on powdered wigs, of yellow top-boots, and exhaling the general air of ruffianly geniality characteristic of the manners and soldiers of the age.

As our foreigner advances through the park, where, as he is told, the Emperor makes a promenade each Christmas Eve distributing ten-mark pieces (spiteful chroniclers make it three marks) to all and sundry poor, he will notice the fountain “the water of which rises to a height of 130 feet,” with its twelve figures by French artists of the eighteenth century, and ascend the broad terraced flight of marble steps up which the present Crown Prince is credited with once urging his trembling steed leading to the Mecca of his imagination, the palace Sans Souci itself. The building is only one story high, not large, reminding one somewhat of the Trianon at Versailles, though lacking the Trianon’s finished lightness and elegance, yet with its semicircular colonnade distinctly French, and impressive by its elevated situation. The chief, the enduring, the magical impression, however, begins to form as our foreigner commences his pilgrimage through the rooms in which Frederick passed most of his later years. As he pauses in the Voltaire Chamber he imagines the two great figures, seated in stiff-backed chairs at a little table on which stand, perhaps, a pair of cut Venetian wine-glasses and a tall bottle of old Rheinish the great man of thought and the great man of action, the two great atheists and freethinkers of Europe, with their earnest, sharply featured faces, and their wigs bobbing at each other, discussing the events and tendencies of their time. And how they must have talked no wonder Frederick, though the idol of his subjects, withdrew for such discourse from the society of the day, with its twaddle of the tea-cups and its parade-ground platitudes.

As in our own time, there was then no lack of stimulating topics. The influence of the old Catholicism and the old feudalism was rapidly diminishing, the night of superstition was passing, and the age of reason, that was to culminate with such tremendous and horrible force in the French Revolution, was beginning to dawn. The encyclopaedists, with Diderot and d’Alembert in the van, were holding council in France, mobilizing the intellects of the time, and, like Bacon, taking all knowledge for their province, for a fierce attack on the old philosophy, the old statecraft, the old art, and the old religion. Are such topics and such men to deal with them to be found to-day, or have all the great problems of humanity and its intellect been started, studied, and resolved? And are motor-cars, aeroplanes, dances, Dreadnoughts, millinery, rag-time reviews, auction bridge, the rise and fall of stocks, and the last extraordinary round of golf, all that is left for the present generation to discuss?

However, the guardian of the palace has moved on, the other members of the party are getting bored, and our foreigner follows the guardian’s lead. Thus conducted, he passes through half a dozen rooms, each a museum of historical associations the dining-room with its round table made famous by Menzel’s picture (now in the Berlin National Gallery) in which Frederick and his guests are seen seated, but in which it is difficult if not impossible to be certain which is the host; the concert-room with the clock which Frederick was in the habit of winding up, and which “is said to have stopped at the precise moment of his death, 2.20 a.m., August 17th, 1786”; the death-chamber with its eloquent and pathetic statue, Magnussen’s “Last Moments of Frederick the Great”; the library and picture gallery. Strangely enough, Baedeker has no mention of a female subject portrayed in the concert-room in all sorts of attitudes and in all sorts and no sort of costume. Yet every one has heard of La Barberini, the only woman, the chroniclers (and Voltaire among them) assure us, Frederick ever loved. She was no woman of birth or wit like the Pompadour, Recamier or Stael, but of merely ordinary understanding and the wife of a subordinate official of the Court. She charmed Frederick, however, and may have loved him. If so, let us remember that the morals of those days were not those of ours, and not grudge the lonely King his enjoyment of her beauty and amiability.

One thing only remains for our foreigner to see the coffin of Frederick in the old Garrison Church. It lies in a small chamber behind the pulpit and looks more like the strong box of a miser than the last resting-place of a great king. For such a man it seems poor and mean, but probably Frederick himself did not wish for better. He must have known that his real monument would be his reputation with posterity. In fact the chroniclers agree, and the noble statue of Magnussen confirms the impression, that at the close of his stormy life he was glad finally to be at rest anywhere. “Quand je serai la,” he was wont to say, pointing to where his dogs were buried in the palace park, “je serai sans souci.”

In every court there is a disposition on the part of courtiers to agree with everything the monarch says, to flatter him as dexterously as they can, to minister to princely vanity, if vanity there be, to “crawl on their bellies,” in the choice language of hostile court critics, or “wag their tails” and double up their bodies at every bow; show, in short, in different ways, often all unconsciously, the presence of a servile and self-interested mind. The disposition is not to be found in courts alone. It is one of the commonest and most malignant qualities of humanity, and can any day and at any hour be observed in action in any Ministry of State, any mercantile office, any great warehouse, any public institution, in every scene, in fact, where one or many men are dependent for their living on the favour or caprice of another. On the other hand, let it not be forgotten that this innate tendency of human nature is at times replaced by another which has frequently the same outward manifestations, but is not the same feeling, the sentiment, namely, of embarrassment arising from the fear of being servile, and the equally frequent embarrassment arising from that principle which is always at work in the mind, the association of ideas, which in the case of a monarch presents him to the ordinary mortal as embodying ideas of grandeur, power, might, and intellect to which the latter is unaccustomed. Education, economic changes, and the art of manners have done much to conceal, if not eradicate, human proneness to servility, and the Byzantinism of the time of Caligula and Nero, of Tiberius, Constantine, or Nikiphoros, of the Stuarts and the Bourbons, has long been modified into respect for oneself as well as for the person one addresses. There are, however, still traces of the old evil in the German atmosphere, and in especial a tendency among officials of all grades to be humble and submissive to those above them and haughty and domineering to those below them. The tendency is perhaps not confined to Germany, but it seems, to the inhabitant of countries where bureaucracy is not a powerful caste, to penetrate German society and ordinary life to a greater degree yet not to a great degree than in more democratic societies.

The Emperor naturally knows nothing of such a thing, for there is no one superior to him in the Empire in point of rank, and he is much too modern, too well educated, and of too kindly and liberal a nature to encourage or permit Byzantinism towards him on the part of others. Indeed Byzantinism was never a Hohenzollern failing. In his able work on German civilization Professor Richard tells of some Silesian peasants who knelt down when presenting a petition to Frederick William I, and were promptly told to get up, as “such an attitude was unworthy of a human being.” Only on one occasion in the reign has an action of the Emperor’s afforded ground for the suspicion that he was for a moment filled with the spirit of the Byzantine emperors namely, when he demanded the “kotow” from the Chinese Prince Tschun, who led the “mission of atonement” to Germany. This, however, was not really the result of a Byzantine character or spirit, but of the excusable anger of a man whose innocent representative had been treacherously killed.

Of affinity with the idea of Byzantinism is that as frequently occurring idea in German court and ordinary life conveyed by the word “reaction.” Here again we have one of those qualities to be found among mankind everywhere and always: the instinct opposed to change, even to those changes for the good we call progress, the disposition that made Horace deride the laudator temporis acti se puero of his day, the feeling of the man who laments the passing of the “good old times” and the military veteran who assures us that “the country, sir, is going to the dogs.” In political life such men are usually to be found professing conservatism, owners of land, dearer to them often than life itself, which they fear political change will damage or diminish. In Germany the Conservative forces are the old agrarian aristocracy, the military nobility, and the official hierarchy, who make a worship of tradition, hold for the most part the tenets of orthodox Protestantism, dread the growing influence of industrialism, and are members of the Landlords’ Association: types of a dying feudalism, disposed to believe nothing advantageous to the community if it conflicts with any privilege of their class. Under the name of Junker, the Conservative landowners of the region of Prussia east of the Elbe, they have become everywhere a byword for pride, selfishness, in a word reaction. They and men of their kidney are to be distinguished from the German “people” in the English sense, and hold themselves vastly superior to the burghertum, the vast middle class. They dislike the “academic freedom” of the university professor, would limit the liberty of the press and restrain the right of public meeting, and increase rather than curtail the powers of the police. On the other hand, if they are a powerful drag on the Emperor’s Liberal tendencies Liberal, that is, in the Prussian sense towards a comprehensive and well-organized social policy, they are at least reliable supporters of his Government for the military and naval budgets, since they believe as whole-heartedly in the rule of force as the Emperor himself. The German Conservative would infinitely prefer a return to absolute government to the introduction of parliamentary government. At the same time it should not be supposed that the Emperor or his Chancellor, or even his Court, are reactionary in the sense or measure in which the Socialist papers are wont to assert. It is doubtful if nowadays the Emperor would venture to be reactionary in any despotic way. Given that his monarchy and the spirit that informs it are secure, that Cæsar gets all that is due to Cæsar, and that he and his Government are left the direction of foreign policy, he is quite willing that the people should legislate for themselves, enjoy all the rights that belong to them under the Rechtsstaat established by Frederick the Great, and, in short, enjoy life as best they can.