Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 168, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 July 1911 — GERMAN EMPEROR A BUAY MAN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GERMAN EMPEROR A BUAY MAN

YY Y HEN Berlin was in festive *jm I array to celebrate the two wW hundredth anniversary of j Y the Prussian monarchy, it was an occasion possessing a very special appeal for Kaiser Wilhelm 11., whose title to third German emperor consecrated the supremacy of Prussia among the German states. But in the midst of the festivities came the news of Queen Victoria's illness and the emperor William broke off all the celebrations to hurry over to the bedsire of his royal grandmother. The Boer war was still to drag on for another weary year and longer, and everywhere in Germany there was hostile feeling against Great Britain; there had been many and bitter differences between the courts of St. James and the palace at Potsdam. But the promptness and spontaneity of the kaiser’s sympathy, the simple dignity with which he shared Brittan’s mourning effected a sudden change in English feeling toward him. He had been regarded in England with respect for the continually increased prosperity of Germany under his rule, mingled with some mistrust of his possible ambitions, and with curiosity as the most striking and enigmatic figure in European politics. But now English sentiment responded to the kaiser's action. It became warmer and friendlier; distrust of his impulsive and mercurial nature gradually changed into conviction of his generosity and good feeling, and now there is none among King George’s guests who receive a sincerer welcome.

Net even bls unique position in Europe nor bls close relation with the British royal house account for the Interest taken in England in the kaiser’s personality. No one is pver bored by the kaiser; it is impossible for him to be-dull. No figure in Europe gives rise to so much speculation, to so many differing opinions. After over 20 years of much speechmaking, of a full and active life spent in the public gaze, he leaves us still groping for the key to his eeaseless activities and his extraodinary Influence. Kaiser a Hard Worker.

A curious journalist once motoredto a railway crossing some way down the line to catch a glimpse ot the emperor, who had been attending a gala performance of opera in one of the smaller German capitals. The saloon was brilliantly lighted, the blinds drawn up. and there was the emperor writing at his desk as diligently as the humblest journalist. It was typical of his life. The outsider will take extraordinary, pains to secure a glimpse of the kaiser, but he gleans little except an increased sense at the hard work entailed by modern kingship. Everybody knows the details of his everyday life. Ho rises at 5:30 o'clock, takes a cold douche and breakfasts nt 6:30, teta-a-tete with his wife, on tea and cold meat, or perhaps eggs and bacon. Then follows a long and strenuous morning, spent with his secretaries, or on the parade ground, and often involving more than one change of uniform, for the emperor is very punctilious in these matters, and if he* Is receiving the British ambassador, for Instance, will don a British uniform. The afternoon Is spent in learning new things from explorers and experts of all nations, or possibly In studio or gallery, giving artistic judgments much criticised v ln advanced Berlin circles; the evening, after an early and simple dinner, is given to his family, or to the theater. To one man the kaiser is a lover of peace, to another a firebrand; to one a survival from medieval Markgrafs of Brandenburg; to another the typical head of the most godhead mod-

ern Industrial state in Europe; to one the incarnation of Prussian etiquette and the military caste, to another the gayest and most affable of 'German gentlemen. 'T':’'--:' The truth seems to be that he is all these things - and many others with equal conviction and energy on occasion. Some .of the incongruities disappear on examination. His speeches mislead the English reader who goes to them armed with a British conception -of German stolidity and common sense. The German is not afraid of poetry and sentiment; nor even of high-flown metaphor on the ordinary occasions of life. So when the German emperor chlrstens a battleship there is no reason for him to confine himself to dreary commonplace. “Springing from the old German sagas are the names of ships belonging to thy class. Therefore shalt thou likewise recall to us the gray past of our ancestors and the puissant deity whom our Germanic forefathers in their Ignorance supplicated and worshipped, when the of the north were fought on the polar seas, and death and ruin carried into the land of the enemy. The potent name of the name of this great deity thou shalt bear. I christen thee with the name of Aegir.” An imaginative flight of this kind in christening a battleship stirs and pleases German patriotic feelln_g, nor does it seem to the average German incongruous with more practical qualities. Every German knows that the kaiser is a good technical expert in matters relating to the navy. Sir Edward J. Reed said he possessed “a perfect farseelng penetration and a more thorough information than either his own technical minister of myself possessed, and this knowledge had been gained by experience in a practical and trustworthy way." "The Divine-Right* Theory. Profound conviction in the divine right of the house of Hohenzollern makes the kaiser live up to the spectacular conception of the kingship which *as reflected In the pesudomediaevalism of his favorite dramatist, the late Ernst von Wlldenbruch; it was not in the kaiser’s case incompatible with a very modern practical ability. Himself a successful manufacturer and a model farmer, the kaiser takes the keenest interest in improvements in industrial processes, in the organization of Industry and tn legislation for the security and protection of the workers.

Every one who has lived in Germany knows the exclusiveness of military circles, but the emperor who is the feudal chief of the Prussian aristocracy, numbers among his intimates some of the captains of German Industry. His affection for the late Herr Krupp is well known and he addresses with the familiar thee and thou of ordinary life Herr Wormann, the great Hamburg ship owner, and Herr Ballin, the head of the HamburgAmerican line. Herr Ballln, moreover. Is of Jewish descent. The emperor knows every ship-building yard on the coast.

He takes his metier of Landesvafer and of monarch very seriously and If Prussian tradition involves a certain aloofness absent from the intercourse between the English court and the English people the difference is not fundamental. The German people recognize behind the parade and magnificence of Potsdam a home life ot exceptional brightness and simplicity, distinguished from the life bf the ordinary German household most of all by the unceasing and untiring industry of its head, for whom no task seems too arduous, no detail too trivet ”

KAISER WILHEIM II