As a corps-student he identified himself with young noblemen destined for the army and the higher official posts. These devoted their time largely to carving up each other's features on the fencing floor of their club rooms; and whilst duelling in general is frowned upon by the academic chiefs, it flourishes nevertheless because those in authority feel that youngsters should begin early to familiarize themselves with warlike exercise and the sight of men oozing with blood and losing their footing on the slippery floor. The Kaiser's tastes were for manly sport; and the grandest of all is war. We pay much for a fight where two men strive each to pound the other into pulp. We frequent the dangerous corners at a steeple chase where men and horses kill themselves in the joy of racing. The Romans crowded to the battle of naked men with naked swords-and why should not the next war pay for itself by the rental of grandstand privileges, movie rights, radio broadcasting, even aeroplane rubberneck char-a-bancs for the curious, to whom dollars are no object, and the risk of a stray shot welcome.

William, on coming to the throne, issued two pronunciamentos. The first should have been to his whole people, but he chose to flatter the army firstreserving the tax payers for the less important document. Then he traveled much-ostensibly to make friends amongst his neighbors, but in reality from

youthful curiosity in order to judge them by his own standards. He had a splendid steam yacht and in the first year of his reign paid visits to Russia, Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Next year he sailed the Mediterranean, married his sister to the Crown Prince of Greece, flattered the Pope of Rome by a long call and then made an even longer one on the High Priest of Mahomet in Constantinople. In England he won all hearts by love of sport and the Queen made him Admiral of the Fleet; the Sultan helped him to concessions for the benefit of a German railway; the Pope smoothed out some questions affecting Catholics in Poland and in Russia it looked as though Germany would continue to keep industrial control. Never did sovereign go so far from home and pay so many calls; never did sovereign speak so warmly in favor of Peace nor prepare so feverishly for a war of his own making. In his many journeys far from home he posed as the Prince of Peace he even entered Jerusalem in a manner suggesting the triumph of Christianity over heathenism. In Morocco he proclaimed himself interested in her happiness to the extent of saving her from French suzerainty; and in the Near East he gave notice that henceforth a Lutheran Prussian and no longer a Republican President in Paris would protect Catholic missionaries in the Far East.

The student or mental metamorphosis or super. psychology may in the Kaiser's career trace a steady movement away from the teachings of his father and mother; away from his very conservative grandfather and above all away from the very wise moderation of his illustrious great great uncle the Philosopher King of Sans Souci. Up to 1896 the Kaiser acted to me as one striving to maintain the Peace of Europe; but the great current of national conceit was more than he could resist or even direct. His ancestors on the throne had been satisfied as Kings of a German speaking and protestant thinking piece of land. They had fought hard to round out this piece of land so as to make it of economic value and of military strength --but no one in the days of my youth was so mad as to dream of a Germany striving to have a mighty army on land and a navy rivalling either England or the United States.

The madness of William II manifested itself when the Kiel Canal opened in 1895 and when his navy commenced its career as an aggressive engine of colonial expansion rather than as an instrument of home defense as originally conceived.

Madness is a loose word-which we are apt to apply to such an act other than as we deem reasonable. To maintain Peace and Autocracy for his country-such aims are intelligible. But to tax his people for a

great navy and an immense but unprofitable colonial Empire! Can we wonder that Socialism increased with every year of his reign and that the world at large commented sceptically on the meaning of a very popular song called: "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles!"

We must not here weary the reader with a Kaiser chronicle beginning with a cable to Paul Kruger in 1896 and ending with another autograph equally astounding in 1918. From the date of the Kiel Canal commences a succession of ill considered, not to say ill natured, acts which have been called political pin pricks because none of them amounted to much when considered by itself.

The Jameson Raid episode helped neither Kruger nor Kaiser. In 1897 came another pin prick from Potsdam-the sudden seizure of Kiaochow and with it the virtual control of a province with a population. equal to that of France-the holy soil of Confucius in Shantung. This pin prick was a hard one on Chinanot so much the loss of a rich province as the very offensive manner in which the coup d'etat was made.

The Roman Catholic authorities had insisted on sending into the interior of Shantung two of their missionaries in spite of Chinese protest. The mob killed these reverend exhorters and the Kaiser promptly pocketed a province. This opens up a

pleasing vista of national expansion by means of missionaries with a predilection for martyrdom; and had not the World War happened, who knows how many more provinces might have come under Prussian control through similar self sacrifice on the part of pious priests?

German sentiment had been created by a horrible. cartoon of the Kaiser depicting the gentle Buddha as a raging dragon devouring kindly Christians. Had this cartoon been but privately circulated, the Orient might have ignored it as an ebullition of religious fanaticism. But the artist insisted on claiming all the glory possible by not mere appending his autograph but by sending it throughout the world on the wings of an eager press.

Japan and China felt this pin prick much as a Christian would have resented a caricature of Jesus entering Jerusalem. India gave birth to Buddha, and while her 400 millions are not Buddhists in name, they nevertheless united with all non-Christians in resenting the Imperial insult that had no effect save to drive a wedge between East and West and help along the so-called Boxer Movement which at bottom is one for national independence and freedom from foreign meddling. Kaiser not only seized Kiaochow but imconverted it into a fortress and naval base from which he could make military advances as opportunity offered.

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