Mention may also be made of a very characteristic speech of the Emperor’s this year at Cuestrin, where he was unveiling a monument to a favourite Hohenzollern, the Great Elector.  Cuestrin, it will be remembered, is the town where Frederick the Great, another of the Emperor’s favourites, was imprisoned by an angry father, along with his friend Lieutenant Katte, when Frederick was trying to escape the parental cruelty and violence.

Referring to Frederick’s declaration that he was the “first servant of the State,” the Emperor said:—­

“He could only learn to be so by subordination, by obedience, in a word by what we Prussians describe as discipline.  And this discipline must have its roots in the King’s house as in the house of the citizen, in the army as among the people.  Respect for authority, obedience to the Crown, and obedience to parental and paternal influence—­that is the lesson the memories of to-day should teach us.  From these attributes spring those which we call patriotism, namely the subordination of the individual ego, of the individual subject, to the welfare of all.  It is what is particularly needed at the present time.”

The Emperor was, of course, thinking of the Social Democrats.  Having finished his speech, he went and for a while stood thoughtfully at the historic window of Cuestrin Castle, from which Frederick watched the execution of his unfortunate companion, Katte.

Only the year 1904 separates us from the Emperor’s Morocco adventure.  The economic ideas which have been referred to as the basis of German foreign policy were germinating in his mind, and the plans for at least a partial realization of them were working in his head.  Addressing the chief burgomaster of Karlsruhe in April, just a year before he started for Tangier, he spoke of Weltpolitik.  “You are right,” he told the burgomaster,

“in saying that the task of the German people is a hard one....  I hope our peace will not be disturbed, and that the events that are now happening will open our eyes, steel our courage, and find us united, if it should be necessary for us to intervene in world-policy.”

The Emperor had, no doubt, specially in mind the birth of the Anglo-French Entente and the war between Russia and Japan, both events forming the dominant factors of the political situation at this time.  The Russo-Japanese War arose primarily from the unwillingness of Russia to evacuate Manchuria after the Boxer troubles in China.  The incidents of the war are still fresh in public memory.

It need only be recalled here that Germany was neutral throughout the conflict, that both President Roosevelt and the Emperor offered their services as mediators in its course, and that on the capture of Port Arthur by Admiral Nogi, in January, 1905, the Emperor telegraphed his bestowal of the Ordre pour le Merile on General Stoessel, the Russian defender of Port Arthur, and on Admiral Nogi.