e charge with insinuations of
absolutism and Caesarism. Prince Buelow said:

"Absolutism is not a German word, and is not a German
institution. It is an Asiatic plant, and one cannot talk of
absolutism in Germany so long as our circumstances develop
in an organic and legal manner, respecting the rights of the
Crown, which are just as sacred as the rights of the
burgher; respecting also law and order, which are not
disregarded 'from above,' and will not be disregarded. If
ever our circumstances take on an absolute, a Caesarian,
form, it will be as the consequence of revolution, of
convulsion. For on revolution follows Caesarism as W follows
U--that is the rule in the A B C of the world's history."

There is no harm in reminding Prince Buelow that the letter V--which
may be a very important link in the chain of events--comes between U
and W. It is clear also that the Chancellor must have forgotten his
English history for the moment, for though Cromwell's rule may be
called Caesarism of a kind, the reign of William III, of "glorious,
pious, and immortal memory," which followed the revolution of 1688,
could not fairly be so named.

Three years later, in 1906, Prince Buelow found it necessary to defend
the Emperor on the score of the "personal regiment." "The view,"
Prince Buelow said,

"that the monarch should have no individual thoughts of his own
about State and government, but should only think with the heads
of his Ministers and only say what they tell him to say, is
fundamentally wrong--is inconsistent with State rights and with
the wish of the German people";

and he concluded by challenging the House to mention a single case in
which the Emperor had acted unconstitutionally. None of these
bickerings between Crown and Parliament went to the root of the
constitutional relations between them, but they betrayed the existence
of popular dissatisfaction with the Emperor, which in a couple of
years was to culminate in an outbreak of national anger.

An occurrence calls for mention here, not only as a kind of harbinger
of the "storm," but as one of the chief incidents which in the course
of recent years have troubled Anglo-German relations. The incident
referred to is that of the so-called "Tweedmouth Letter," which was an
autograph letter from the Emperor to Lord Tweedmouth, First Lord of
the British Admiralty at the time, dated February