While in England the Emperor, in company with Lord Roberts and Sir Evelyn Wood, inspected his English regiment, the 1st Royal Dragoons.  A curious and amusing feature of the visit was a lecture before the Royal Family at Sandringham by a German engineer, for whom the Emperor acted as interpreter, on a novel adaptation of spirit for culinary, lighting, and laundry purposes.  The Emperor’s practical illustration of the use of the new heating system, as applied to the ordinary household flatiron, is said to have caused great merriment among his audience.

Germany’s home atmosphere about this time was for a moment troubled by an exhibition of the Emperor’s “personal regiment” in the form of a telegram to the Prince Regent of Bavaria, known in Germany as the “Swinemunde Despatch.”  The Bavarian Diet, in a fit of economy, had refused its annual grant of L5,000 for art purposes.  The Emperor was violently angry, wired to the Prince Regent his indignation with the Diet and offered to pay the L5,000 out of his own pocket.  It was not a very tactful offer, to be sure, though well intended; and as his telegram was not an act of State, “covered” by the Chancellor’s signature, while the Bavarians in particular felt hurt at what they considered outside interference, Germans generally blamed it as a new demonstration of autocratic rule.

One or two other art incidents of the period may be noted.  A domestic one was the gift to the Emperor by the Empress of a model of her hand in Carrara marble, life-sized, by the German sculptor, Rheinhold Begas.  The Emperor, it is well known, has no special liking for the companionship of ladies, but he confesses to an admiration for pretty feminine hands.  Another incident was the Emperor’s order to the painter, Professor Rochling, to paint a picture representing the famous episode in the China campaign, when Admiral Seymour gave the order “Germans to the Front.”  It is to the present day a popular German engraving.  The year was also remarkable for a visit to Berlin of Coquelin aine, the great French actor.  The Emperor saw him in “Cyrano de Bergerac,” was, like all the rest of the play-going world, delighted with both play and player, and held a long and lively conversation with the artist.  Lastly may be mentioned a telegram of the Emperor’s to the once-famed tragic actress, Adelaide Ristori, in Rome, congratulating her on her eightieth birthday and expressing his regret that he had never met her.  A basket of flowers simultaneously arrived from the German Embassy.

We are now in 1903.  During the preceding years the Emperor’s thoughts, as has been seen, were occupied with art as a means of educating his folk, purifying their sentiments, and, above all, making them faithful lieges of the House of Hohenzollern.  By a natural association of ideas we find him this year thinking much and deeply about religion; for, though artists are not a species remarkable for the depth or orthodoxy of their views on religious matters, art and religion are close allies, and probably the greater the artist the more real religion he will be found to have.