equerries were behind; but so far, that a stranger would not have thought them of our party. The Emperor was then 33 years old, wearing a military grey overcoat and cap and looking much like any one of the hundreds of his age amongst the officers of his garrison. On that whole walk through Potsdam I recall but three civilians who recognized him-on the contrary, we had constantly to turn out into the street in favor of deep chested and vigorously gesticulating women who at that moment were absorbed in settling the price of a kilo of butter and had no eyes for any Kaiser save on a silver coin. We had been commenting on the law governing political assassination, for in those days the royal sport of Muscovy seemed to be one in which the Czar traveled by one train whilst he dispatched the others as decoys for nihilist bombs. I had referred to the unsatisfactory nature of a Russian Emperor's job and the precautions he had to take against attacks upon his person. were approaching a cellar hole covered by an iron lid and I said: "Now if this were St. Petersburg you would suspect a bomb under that cellar lid." He laughed; walked straight at the supposititious engine of destruction and gave it a resounding bang with his foot. Then turning to me he said seriously: "If I had to think of my life, I could not possibly do my day's work."' William II, like Frederic the Great,

We

was born a very frail thing; and performed his enor mous daily task only by the most conscientious control of his appetites and his out-door exercise. He had a very wise medical mentor in the late Dr. Leuthold of blessed memory who doctored in the spirit of "old Fritz" who once wrote to Voltaire: "I have as little faith in doctors of medicine as in those of theology"-another form of an English proverb: "A man at forty is either a fool or his own physician.' Dr. Leuthold gave no drugs, but prescribed very strict regimen and enforced it.

Let us now look at the Kaiser politically and search for the explanation of his later policies-those of the mailed fist and the war lord and the jingling of his mighty sword in its loose and far too easily worked scabbard.

He entered the army at the age of ten; was a lieutenant when he entered Bonn University as a duelling corps student and was made a major general at 28. His early life was calculated to stir in him admiration for military achievement; particularly so as the Prussian army was in his eyes idealized in the persons of such grand veterans as Moltke and his contemporaries to whom Germany owed her extraordinary expansion through the three wars of 1864, 1866 and 1870.

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 superpsychology 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