Not far away one had glimpses of the white statues of My Ancestors of the Sieges Allee, or avenue of victory—­the present Kaiser’s own idea—­with the great men of the time on their right and left hands.  People whose sense of taste, not to say of humour, may limit their statecraft had smiled at this monotonous and grandiose row of the dead bones of distinguished and mediocre royalty immortalized in marble to the exact number of thirty-two.  But they were My Ancestors, O Germans, who made you what you are!  Right dress and keep that line of royalty in mind!  It is your royal line, older than the trees in the garden, firm as the rocks, Germany itself.  The last is not the least in might nor the least advertised in the age of publicity.  He is to make the next step in advance for Germany and bring more tribute home, if all Germans will be loyal to him.

One paused to look at the photograph of the Kaiser in a shop window; a big photograph of that man whose photograph is everywhere in Germany.  It is a stern face, this face, as the leader wishes his people to see him, with its erectile moustache, the lips firm set, the eyes challenging and the chin held so as to make it symbolic of strength:  a face that strives to say in that pose:  “Onward!  I lead!” Germans have seen it every day for a quarter of a century.  They have lived with it and the character of it has grown into their natures.

In the same window was a smaller photograph of the Crown Prince, with his cap rakishly on the side of his head, as if to give himself a distinctive characteristic in the German eye; but his is the face of a man who is not mature for his years, and a trifle dissipated.  For a while after the war began he, as leader of the war party, knew the joy of being more popular than the Kaiser.  But the tide turned soon in favour of a father who appeared to be drawn reluctantly into the ordeal of death and wounds for his people in “defence of the Fatherland” and against a son who had clamoured for the horror which his people had begun to realize, particularly as his promised entry into Paris had failed.  There can be no question which of the two has the wise head.

The Crown Prince had passed into the background.  He was marooned with ennui in the face of French trenches in the West, whilst all the glory was being won in the East.  Indeed, father had put son in his place.  One day, the gossips said, son might have to ask father, in the name of the Hohenzollerns, to help him recover his popularity.  His photograph had been taken down from shop windows and in its place, on the right hand of the Kaiser in the Sieges Allee of contemporary fame, was the bull-dog face of von Hindenburg, victor of Tannenberg.  The Kaiser shared von Hindenburg’s glory; he has shared the glory of all victorious generals; such is his histrionic gift in the age of the spotlight.

Make no mistake—­his people, deluded or not, love him not only because he is Kaiser, but also for himself.  He is a clever man, who began his career with the enormous capital of being emperor and made the most of his position to amaze the world with a more versatile and also a more inscrutable personality than most people realize.  Poseur, perhaps, but an emperor these days may need to be a poseur in order to wear the ermine of Divine Right convincingly to most of his subjects.