Several anecdotes are current having reference to the Emperor as
sportsman. One of them, for example, mentions a loving-cup of
Frederick William III's time, kept at the hunting lodge of Letzlingen,
which is filled with champagne and must be emptied at a draught by
anyone visiting the lodge for the first time. This is great fun for
the Emperor, who a year or two ago made a number of Berlin guests,
including Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg, the Austrian Ambassador,
Szoghenyi-Marich, the Secretary for the Navy, Admiral von Tirpitz, and
the Crown Prince of Greece stand before him and drain the cup. As the
story goes, "the attempts of the guests to drink out of the heavy cup,
which is fixed into a set of antlers in such a way as to make it
difficult to drink without spilling the wine, caused great amusement."

The principles of sport generally, it may be here interpolated, are
not quite the same in Germany as in England, though no country has
imitated England in regard to sport so closely and successfully as
Germany. Up to a comparatively few years ago the Germans had neither
inclination nor means for it, and though always enthusiastic hunters,
hunting--not the English fox-hunting, but hunting the boar and the
bear, the wolf and the deer--was almost the sole form of manly sport
practised. _Turnen_, the most popular sort of German indoor
gymnastics, only began in 1861, a couple of years after the birth of
the Emperor. There are now nearly a dozen cricket clubs alone in
Berlin, football clubs all over the Empire, tennis clubs in every
town, rowing clubs at all the seaports and along the large rivers,
nearly all following English rules and in numerous cases using English
sporting terms. At the same time sport is not the religion it is in
England--indeed, to keep up the metaphor, hardly a living creed.

The German attitude towards sport is not altogether the same as the
English attitude. In England the object of the game is that the best
man shall win, that he shall not be in any way unfairly or unequally
handicapped _vis-a-vis_ his opponent, and the honour, not the
intrinsic value of the prize, is the main consideration. These
principles are not yet fully understood or adopted in Germany,
possibly owing to the early military training of the German youth
making the carrying off the prize anyhow and by any means the main
object. It is _Realpolitik_ in sport, and a _Realpolitik_ which is not
wholly unknown in England; but whil