ation-stones, unveiling statues,
dedicating churches, attending manoeuvres, encouraging yachting at
Kiel by his presence during the yachting week, or hurrying off to meet
the monarch of a foreign country. He still enjoys his annual trip
along the shores of Norway or breaks away from the cares of State to
pass a few weeks at his Corfu castle, dazzling in its marble whiteness
and overlooking the Acroceraunian mountains, or to hunt or shoot at
the country seat of some influential or wealthy subject. In fine, he
is still engaged with all the energy of his nature, if in a somewhat
less flamboyant fashion than during his earlier years, in his, as he
believes, divinely appointed work of guiding Prussia's destiny and
building up the German Empire.

It is because he is an Empire-builder that his numerous journeys
abroad and restlessness of movement at home have earned for him the
nickname of the "travelling Kaiser." The Germans themselves do not
understand his conduct in this respect. If one urges that Hohenzollern
kings, and none of them more than the Great Elector and Frederick the
Great, were incessant travellers, they will reply that their kings had
to be so at a time when the Empire was not yet established, when
rebellious nobles had to be subdued, and when the spirit of
provincialism and particularism had to be counteracted. Hence, they
say, former Hohenzollerns had to exercise personal control in all
parts of their dominions, see that their military dispositions were
carried out, and study social and economic conditions on the spot; but
nowadays, when the Empire is firmly established, when the
administration is working like a clock and the post and telegraph are
at command, the Emperor should stay at home and direct everything from
his capital.

The Emperor himself evidently takes a different view. He does not
consider the forty-year-old Empire as completed and consolidated, but
regards it much as the Great Elector or Frederick the Great regarded
Prussia when that kingdom was in the making. He believes in
propagating the imperial idea by his personal presence in all parts of
the Empire, and at the same time observing the progress that is being
made there. He is, finally, a believer in getting into personal touch,
as far as is possible, with foreign monarchs, foreign statesmen, and
foreign peoples, for he doubtless sees that with every decade the
interests of nations are becoming more closely identified.

In connexion