Emperor's conception of his relations to the people remains to-day
what he was brought up in and what it was when he mounted the throne.
In England, America, and France the people are the real rulers, and
their monarch or president is their highest official servant and
representative. The idea is not perhaps constitutionally expressed,
but it is universally and deeply felt in the countries named. In
Germany the opposite theory obtains--for how long it must be left to
the future to say. In Germany the Emperor is the real ruler, the
genuine monarch, and the people are his subjects, the country his
country. Hence, while an English king in an official document or
public statement would not think of putting himself first and the
people or country second, the German Emperor's official statements and
speeches constantly repeat such expressions as "I and my people," "I
and the army," "my capital," "me and the Fatherland," and a score
more; so that Anglo-Saxons and other foreigners acquire the impression
that the word "my" is no figure of rhetoric or pride, but a simple
claim of ownership or possession. And the official relation between
monarch and people is reflected in the people's ordinary life. To the
foreigner it continually appears that the public are the servants of
the official, not the contrary, whether officialism takes the shape of
a post-office clerk, a tramcar conductor, a shop salesman, a
policeman, or a waiter. All these functionaries are the possessors of
an authority which the citizen is expected to, and usually does, obey.
The explanation of such a state of things is a little abstruse, but an
attempt may be made at giving it.

The period immediately preceding the reign of Frederick the Great was
a period of absolute monarchy in Germany, a system introduced from
France, where Louis XIV had proclaimed the doctrine _L'etat, c'est
moi_, according to which the lives and property of the subject
belonged to the Prince, whose will was to be obeyed without question
or demur. There were now four hundred courts in Germany in imitation
of the Court of Versailles, and the smaller the principality the
greater the absolutism. Absolutism, however, required an army to
support it; hence the establishment of standing and mercenary armies
and the disuse of arms by the citizen. The result, to quote Professor
Ernst Richard's work on "German Civilization," was that

"the pride of the burgher and the peasant was broken. A