This whimsical susceptibility to affront8 in the printed word, no matter how mean or trivial the force back of it, is a trait which has often come near making Bismarck ridiculous, and it is not pleasant to note how largely William seems also to be possessed9 with it. He is as nervous about what the papers will say as a young débutante on the stage. Not only does he keep an anxious watch upon the talk of the German editors, but he ordains10 a vigilant11 scrutiny12 of the articles printed in foreign countries from the pens of correspondents stationed at Berlin. In this he is very German. Nobody in England, for example, ever dreams of caring about, or for the most part of even taking the trouble to learn, what is printed abroad about English personages or politics. The foreign correspondents in London are as free as the wind that blows. But matters were ordered very differently at the beginning of the present reign in Berlin, and to this day journalists pursue their calling there under a sense of espionage13 hardly to be imagined in Fleet Street. It is true that a change for the better is distinctly visible of late, but it will be the work of many years to eradicate14 the low views of German journalism15 which Bismarck instilled16, alike, unfortunately, in the royal palaces and the editorial offices of Prussia.
One of the very first acts of William’s reign was the expulsion from Berlin of two French journalists whose sympathetic accounts of his father’s dismissal of Puttkamer had been distasteful to the royal eye. In the following January the correspondents of the Figaro and National of Paris were similarly driven out. In March, 1889, simultaneously17 with the seizure18 of the Berlin Volks-Zeitung and the prosecution19 of the Freisinnige Zeitung, a new Penal20 Code was presented to the Reichstag which contained such arbitrary provisions for stamping out the remaining liberties of the press that even the Cologne Gazette denounced it as “putting a frightful21 weapon into the hands of the Government for suppressing freedom of speech and silencing opposition22.” This measure did not pass, but the odium of having introduced it remained.
Although in other respects William was already observed to be separating himself from his Chancellor23, it is clear that he has a large share in this odium. All his utterances24, both at this time and up to the present date, show how thoroughly25 he believes in editing the editors. This tendency was during the year 1889 to exhibit its comical side.
The special organ of the Waldersee party was the high-and-dry old Tory journal, the Kreuz-Zeitung. Early in the year this mouthpiece of the anti-Bismarck coalition26 was raided by the Chancellor, and both its offices and the house of its editor, Baron27 Hammerstein, ransacked28 for incriminating documents. The Kaiser is believed to have intervened to prevent more serious steps being taken. Later in the year, as the success of the Waldersee combination in weaning the Kaiser away from Bismarck grew more and more marked, the Kreuz-Zeitung foolishly gave voice to its elation29, and attacked the “Cartel” coalition of parties which controlled the Reichstag. The Kaiser thereupon printed a personal communique in the official paper saying that he approved of the “Cartel” and was “unable to reconcile the means by which the Kreuz-Zeitung assailed30 it with respect for his own person.” This warning proved insufficient31, for in the following January Baron Hammerstein put up as a candidate for a vacancy32 at Bielefeld, and talked so openly about being the real nominee33 of the Kaiser that William caused to be inserted in all the papers a notice of his order that the Kreuz-Zeitung should not henceforth be taken at any of the royal palaces, or allowed in public reading-rooms. It may be imagined how the Liberal editors chuckled34 over this.
So recently as in May of last year, two months after the retirement35 of Bismarck, when the regular official deputation from the new Reichstag waited upon William, he pointed36 out to the Radical37 members that the Freisinnige press was criticizing the army estimates, which he and his generals had made as low as possible, and sharply warned them to see that a stop was put to such conduct on the part of their friends, the Radical editors. And only last December, in his remarkable38 speech to the Educational Conference, he lightly grouped journalists with the “hunger candidates” and others who formed an over-educated class “dangerous to society.”
This inability to tolerate the expression of opinions different from his own is very Bismarckian.
The ex-Chancellor, in fact, has for years past acted and talked upon the theory that anybody who did not agree with him must of necessity be unpatriotic, and came at last to hurl39 the epithet40 of Reichsfeind—enemy of the Empire—every time any one disputed him on any point whatsoever41.
William has roughly shorn away Bismarck’s pretence42 to infallibility, but about the divine nature of his own claims he has no doubt. Some of his deliverances on questions of morals and ethics43, in his capacity as a sort of helmeted Northern Pope, are calculated to bring a smile to the face of the Muse44 of History. His celebrated45 harangue46 to the Rector of the Berlin University, Professor Gebhardt, wherein he complained that, under the lead of democratic professors, the students were filled with destructive political doctrines47, and concluded by gruffly saying, “Let your students go more to churches and less to beer cellars and fencing saloons”—was put down to his youth, for it dates from the close of 1888. It is interesting to note, from William’s recent speech at Bonn, that he has decidedly altered his views on both beer-drinking and duelling among students. He began his reign, however, with ultra-puritanical notions on these as well as other subjects.
Long after this early deliverance his confidence in himself, so far from suffering abatement48, had so magnified itself that he called the professors of another University together and lectured them upon the bad way in which they taught history. He had discovered, he said, that there was now much fondness for treating the French Revolution as a great political movement, not without its helpful and beneficent results. This pernicious notion must no longer be encouraged in German universities, but students should be taught to regard the whole thing as one vast and unmitigated crime against God and man.
In this dogmatic phase of his character William is much more like Frederic William I than like any of his nearer ancestors in the Hohenzollern line. These later monarchs49, beginning with Frederic the Great and following his luminous50 example, were habitually51 chary52 about bothering themselves with their subjects’ opinions. William at one time thought a good deal upon the fact that he was a successor of Frederic the Great, and by fits and starts set himself to imitate the earlier acts of that sovereign. His restless flying about from place to place, and, even more clearly, his edicts rebuking53 the army officers for gambling54 and for harshness to their men, were copied from that illustrious original. But in his attitude toward the mental and moral liberty of his subjects he goes back a generation to Frederic’s father—and suggests to us also the reflection that he is a grandson of that highly self-confident gentleman whom English-speaking people knew as the Prince Consort55.
Frederic the Great had so little of this spirit in him that he made himself memorably56 unique among eighteenth-century sovereigns by allowing such freedom to the press that liberty sank into license57, and the most scandalous and mendacious58 attacks upon his personal life were printed in and hawked59 about Berlin to the end of his days. As for his refusal to interfere60 in the alleged61 perversion62 of Protestant children by Catholic teachers, his comment on the margin63 of the ministerial complaint, “In this country every man must get to heaven in his own way,” is justly cherished to this day as worth all his other writings put together.
William’s spasms64, so to speak, of imitative loyalty65 to the memories of his ancestors have been productive of many curious, not to say diverting, results. Their progressive consecutiveness66 is not always easy to make out, but they afford, as a whole, very interesting insights into the young man’s temperament67.
When tragic68 chance thrust him forward and upon the throne, his youthful imagination happened to be in some mysterious way under the spell of that most astounding69 of all his forefathers70, Frederic William I. He spoke71 frequently with enthusiasm of the character of this rude, choleric72 barbarian73, and even brought himself to believe that there was something fine in that strange creature’s inability to speak any language but German. It was under the sway of this admiration74 for the second Prussian King that William, in January of 1889, had all the French cooks in his palaces discharged, and ordered that hereafter the royal bill of fare should be a Speisekarte, with the names of dishes in German, instead of the accustomed menu in French. It will not, however, have escaped notice that William is a changeable young man, and this ultra-Teutonic mood did not last very long. In the following autumn he had so far recovered from it that his visit to Constantinople was reported to have been marred75 by the Sultan’s mistaken hospitality in giving him nothing but German champagnes to drink. It must be admitted, however, that scarcely the most robust76 prejudice could stand out long under such a test.
In the spring of 1890 there came the 150th anniversary of the accession of Frederic the Great, and with it a sudden shift in the young Kaiser’s admiration. For a long time thereafter he made no speech without alluding77 to this most splendid figure in Prussian history, and quoting him as an example to be followed with reverential loyalty.
Then in December came the turn of still a third bygone Hohenzollern. It was on December 1, 1640, that the youth of twenty, who was later to be known as the Great Elector, entered upon the herculean task of saving hapless, bankrupt little Brandenburg from literal annihilation. William has told us that as a boy he scarcely learned anything at all about this illustrious ancestor of his. Apparently78 little had been done to make good this lack of information up to the time when, toward the close of 1890, he found that the Great Elector’s 250th anniversary was near at hand, and felt that it ought to be celebrated. He began reading the history of that memorable79 reign, and was at once excitedly interested and impressed. There has always been a charming, if childish, naivete about the manner in which William frankly80 exposes his mental processes, and, having just heard of something for the first time which everybody else knows, brings it forward to public notice as if it were a fresh and most remarkable discovery. The effect produced upon him by his belated introduction to the life and works of the last Elector affords an apt illustration of this tendency. At the celebration William made a long speech in eulogy81 of his ancestor, which in every sentence seemed to take it for granted that heretofore no one had written or thought or known about the Great Elector. Since that time the young Emperor has rarely spoken in public, at least to a Prussian audience, without some reference to this distinguished82 predecessor83—whereas we never hear now of either Frederic the Great or his savage84 father.
Doubtless the fervour with which William has adopted the Great Elector as his model ancestor is in large part due to the fact that the latter’s first important act was the summary dismissal of his father’s Prime Minister, Schwarzenberg. The parallel to be drawn85 between the disgrace of this powerful favourite and the fall of Bismarck is often faulty and nowhere exact, but it is evident that it impressed William’s imagination greatly when he came upon it, and that he could not resist the temptation to suggest it to the world at large. In this same anniversary speech he said: “My stout86 ancestor had no one to lean upon.”
The eminent87 statesman who had served his predecessor was revealed to have worked for his own personal ends, and the young sovereign was forced to mark out his own path unaided. The comparison was a cruel one, because the manner in which Schwarzenberg “worked for his own personal ends” was that of taking bribes88 to betray his royal master and his country. Yet the loose phrase could also describe Bismarck’s hot-headed use of his vast governmental powers to crush his individual enemies, and in this sense every one felt that William was instituting a comparison.
But this embittered89 remark belongs to a much later period than has as yet come under our view, and marks an acute stage of the dramatic and momentous90 quarrel between Kaiser and Chancellor, of the dawning of which there were only vague anticipatory91 rumours92 in 1889.
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1
sensational
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| adj.使人感动的，非常好的，轰动的，耸人听闻的 | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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disturbance
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| n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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friction
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| n.摩擦，摩擦力 | |
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6
coerced
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| v.迫使做( coerce的过去式和过去分词 )；强迫；（以武力、惩罚、威胁等手段）控制；支配 | |
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7
cowardice
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| n.胆小，怯懦 | |
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affront
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| n./v.侮辱，触怒 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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ordains
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| v.任命（某人）为牧师( ordain的第三人称单数 )；授予（某人）圣职；（上帝、法律等）命令；判定 | |
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vigilant
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| adj.警觉的，警戒的，警惕的 | |
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scrutiny
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| n.详细检查，仔细观察 | |
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espionage
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| n.间谍行为，谍报活动 | |
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eradicate
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| v.根除，消灭，杜绝 | |
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journalism
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| n.新闻工作，报业 | |
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instilled
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| v.逐渐使某人获得（某种可取的品质），逐步灌输( instill的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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seizure
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| n.没收；占有；抵押 | |
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prosecution
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| n.起诉，告发，检举，执行，经营 | |
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penal
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| adj.刑罚的；刑法上的 | |
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frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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chancellor
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| n.(英)大臣；法官；(德、奥)总理；大学校长 | |
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utterances
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| n.发声( utterance的名词复数 )；说话方式；语调；言论 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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coalition
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| n.结合体，同盟，结合，联合 | |
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baron
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| n.男爵；(商业界等)巨头，大王 | |
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ransacked
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| v.彻底搜查( ransack的过去式和过去分词 )；抢劫，掠夺 | |
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elation
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| n.兴高采烈，洋洋得意 | |
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assailed
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| v.攻击( assail的过去式和过去分词 )；困扰；质问；毅然应对 | |
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insufficient
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| adj.(for，of)不足的，不够的 | |
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vacancy
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| n.（旅馆的）空位，空房，（职务的）空缺 | |
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nominee
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| n.被提名者；被任命者；被推荐者 | |
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chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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retirement
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| n.退休，退职 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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hurl
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| vt.猛投，力掷，声叫骂 | |
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epithet
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| n.（用于褒贬人物等的）表述形容词，修饰语 | |
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whatsoever
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| adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么 | |
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42
pretence
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| n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰 | |
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ethics
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| n.伦理学；伦理观，道德标准 | |
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muse
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| n.缪斯（希腊神话中的女神），创作灵感 | |
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celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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46
harangue
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| n.慷慨冗长的训话，言辞激烈的讲话 | |
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47
doctrines
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| n.教条( doctrine的名词复数 )；教义；学说；（政府政策的）正式声明 | |
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48
abatement
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| n.减(免)税，打折扣，冲销 | |
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monarchs
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| 君主，帝王( monarch的名词复数 ) | |
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50
luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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51
habitually
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| ad.习惯地，通常地 | |
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52
chary
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| adj.谨慎的，细心的 | |
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53
rebuking
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| 责难或指责( rebuke的现在分词 ) | |
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54
gambling
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| n.赌博；投机 | |
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consort
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| v.相伴；结交 | |
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memorably
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| 难忘的 | |
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license
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| n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许 | |
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mendacious
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| adj.不真的，撒谎的 | |
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59
hawked
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| 通过叫卖主动兜售（hawk的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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perversion
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| n.曲解；堕落；反常 | |
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margin
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| n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘 | |
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spasms
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| n.痉挛( spasm的名词复数 )；抽搐；（能量、行为等的）突发；发作 | |
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loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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consecutiveness
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| Consecutiveness | |
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temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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astounding
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| adj.使人震惊的vt.使震惊，使大吃一惊astound的现在分词) | |
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forefathers
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| n.祖先，先人；祖先，祖宗( forefather的名词复数 )；列祖列宗；前人 | |
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71
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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choleric
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| adj.易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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barbarian
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| n.野蛮人；adj.野蛮(人)的；未开化的 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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marred
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| adj. 被损毁, 污损的 | |
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robust
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| adj.强壮的，强健的，粗野的，需要体力的，浓的 | |
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alluding
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| 提及，暗指( allude的现在分词 ) | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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80
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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81
eulogy
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| n.颂词；颂扬 | |
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82
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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predecessor
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| n.前辈，前任 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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85
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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88
bribes
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| n.贿赂( bribe的名词复数 )；向（某人）行贿，贿赂v.贿赂( bribe的第三人称单数 )；向（某人）行贿，贿赂 | |
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89
embittered
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| v.使怨恨，激怒( embitter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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90
momentous
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| adj.重要的，重大的 | |
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91
anticipatory
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| adj.预想的，预期的 | |
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92
rumours
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| n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传 | |
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