omwell, no Declaration of
Independence is to be found in German history. No vigorous demand from
the people themselves marks their progress. You can read all there is
of German history in the biographies of the Great Elector, of
Frederick William the First, of Frederick the Great, of York, of von
Stein, Hardenberg, Sharnhorst, and Bluecher, of Bismarck, William I,
and the present Emperor.

What the Kaiser believes of history is true of German history. If he
asserts himself as he does in Germany, it is because two hundred and
fifty years of German history put him wholly and entirely in the
right. It is to be presumed that what every student of German history
may see for himself, has not escaped the flexible intelligence of the
present Emperor, and that is, that only the autocratic kings of
Prussia succeeded, and that only an autocratic statesman succeeded, in
bringing the whole country into line, by the acknowledgment of the
King of Prussia, and his heirs forever, as German emperors.

The first so-called indiscretion of the present Emperor was
magnificent. He dismissed Bismarck two years after he came to the
throne. If you have ever been the owner of a yacht and your sailing-master
has grown to be a tyrant, and you have taken your courage in
your hand and bundled him over the side, you have had in a microcosmic
way the sensations of such an experience.

It is said that Bismarck, then seventy-five years old, and since 1862
accustomed to undisputed power, demurred to the wish of the Emperor
that the other ministers should have access to him directly, and not
as heretofore only through the chancellor. It is said too that the
matter-of-fact and somewhat cynical Bismarck, had but scanty respect
for the mystical view of his grandfather as a saint, that the Emperor
everywhere proclaimed. In 1896, the 20th of February, in speaking of
his grandfather, he refers to him as: "The Emperor William, that
personality which has become for us in some sort that of a saint."

Bismarck, too, objected to the Emperor's policy as regards the
treatment of, and the legislation for, the workingmen. On February the
5th, 1890, he writes to Bismarck: "It is the duty of the state to
regulate the duration and conditions of work in such manner that the
health and the morality of the workingman may be preserved, and that
his needs may be satisfied and his desire for equality before the law
assured."

"Now this is the tale of the Council the German