notoriously tight. So as he leaned far out of the
Palace window to admire the passing troops, he presented a mark
so tempting that the Emperor, in jovial mood, was impelled to
administer a resounding spank on the sacred seat of the Czar of
all the Balkans. Instead of taking the slap in the same jovial
spirit in which it was given the Czar Ferdinand, a little jealous
of the self-assumed title of Czar, became furiously angry--so
angry that even the old diplomats of the Metternich school
believed for a time that he never would forgive the whack and
even might refuse to join Germany. But Czar Ferdinand, believing
in the military power of Germany, cast his already war-worn
people in the war against the Allies, much to the regret of many
Bulgarian statesmen who, having been educated at Robert College,
near Constantinople, a college founded and maintained by
Americans, and having imbibed somewhat of the American spirit
there, were not over-pleased to think of themselves arrayed
against the United States of America.

But there is no monarch in all Europe who is more wily than Czar
Ferdinand. At a great feast in Bulgaria at which Emperor William
was present, Czar Ferdinand toasted the Emperor in Latin and
alluded to him as "_Miles Gloriosus_"--which all present took to
mean "glorious soldier"; but the exact Latin meaning of
"gloriosus" is "glorious" in its first meaning and "boastful" in
its second, a meaning well known in Berlin where, at the "Little
Theatre," in a series of plays of all ages, the "_Miles
Gloriosus_" of Plautus had just been presented--a boastful,
conceited soldier, the "_Miles Gloriosus_," the chief character
of the comedy.

Nothing illustrates more vividly the belief of the royal families
of the Central Empires in their God-given right to rule the plain
people than those few words of Maximilian written before his
ill-fated expedition to Mexico. Speaking of the Palace at
Caserta, near Naples, he wrote, "The monumental stairway is
worthy of Majesty. What can be finer than to imagine the
sovereign placed at its head, resplendent in the midst of these
marble pillars,--to fancy this monarch, like a God, graciously
permitting the approach of human beings. The crowd surges upward.
The King vouchsafes a gracious glance, but from a very lofty
elevation. All powerful, imperial, he makes one step towards them
with a smile of infinite condescension. Could Charles V, could
Maria Theresa appear thus at the head of th