espect for the highest moral traditions
of our dear German land. For the theatre ought to contribute
to the culture of the soul and of the character, and to the
elevation of morals. Yes, the theatre is also one of my
weapons.... It is the duty of a monarch to occupy himself
with the theatre, because it may become in his hands an
incalculable force."

If the Emperor has any special gift it is an eye for theatrical effect
in real life as well as on the stage. He had a good share of the
actor's temperament in his younger years, and until recently showed it
in the conduct of imperial and royal business of all kinds. He still
gives it play occasionally in the royal opera houses and theatres. The
Englishman, whose ruler is a civilian, is not much impressed by
pageantry and pomp, except as reminding him of superannuated, though
still revered, historical traditions and events that are landmarks in
a great military and maritime past. He would not care to see his King
always, or even frequently, in uniform, as he would be apt to find in
the fact an undue preference for one class of citizens to another. His
idea is that the monarch ought to treat all classes of his subjects
with equal kingly favour. In Germany it is otherwise. The monarchy
relies on military force for its dynastic security, as much, one might
perhaps say, as for the defence of the country or the keeping of the
public peace, and consequently favours the military. Moreover, the
peoples that compose the Empire have been harassed throughout the long
course of their history by wars; a large percentage of their youth are
serving in the standing army or in the reserves, the Landwehr and the
Landsturm; finally the Germans, though not, as it appears to the
foreigner, an artistic people, save in regard to music, enjoy the
spectacular and the theatrical.

Accordingly we find the Emperor artistically arranging everything and
succeeding particularly well in anything of an historical and
especially of a military nature. The spring and autumn parades of the
Berlin garrison on the Tempelhofer Field--an area large enough, it is
said, to hold the massed armies of Europe--with their gatherings of
from 30,000 to 60,000 troops of all arms, serve at once to excite the
Berliner's martial enthusiasm, while at the same time it obscurely
reminds him that if he treats the dynasty disrespectfully he will have
a formidable repressive force to reckon with. Hence