eople by appeals to their imagination and
patriotism. Had the Emperor been actuated by the spirit of a Minister
or statesman, he would have been far more alive to the fact than he
appears to have been, that every word he uttered would instantly find
an echo in the Parliament, Press, and Stock Exchange of all other
countries.

The Emperor's fundamental mistakes, as disclosed by his speeches,
appear to an Englishman to have been in assuming when they were made
that the Empire was in a less advanced stage of consolidation and
settlement than it in fact was, and in underrating the intelligence,
knowledge, and patriotism of his people. From this point of view his
early speeches in particular sound jejune or superfluous. What would
the Englishman say to a king who began his reign by a series of
homilies on Alfred the Great or Elizabeth or Queen Victoria; by using
strong language about the Labour party or the Fabian Society; by
appeals to throne and altar; by describing to Parliament the chief
duties of the monarch; by recommending the London County Council to
build plenty of churches; by calling journalists "hunger-candidates";
by frequent references to the battles of Waterloo and Trafalgar? Yet,
_mutatis mutandis_, this is not so very unlike what the young Emperor
did, and not for a year or two, but for several years after his
accession. To an Englishman such addresses would appear rather
ill-timed academic declamation.

Yet there was much, and perhaps is still much, to account for, if not
quite justify, the Emperor's rhetoric. The peculiarity of Germany's
monarchic system placed, and places, the monarch in a patriarchal
position not very different from that of Moses towards the
Israelites--a leader, preacher, and prophet. Again, the Empire, when
the Emperor came to the throne, was not a homogeneous nation inspired
by a centuries-old national spirit, but suffered, as it still in a
measure suffers, from the particularism of the various kingdoms and
States composing it: in other words, from too local a patriotism and
stagnation of the imperial idea. Thirdly, the Empire had no navy,
while an Empire to-day without a navy is at a tremendous and dangerous
disadvantage in world-politics, and the mere conception that a navy
was indispensable had to be created in a country lying in the heart of
Europe and with only one short coast-line.

The Englishman is as loyal to his King as the German is to his
Emperor, and England, as littl