The main thing, however, to be noted both about Germany and the German Emperor is what they stand for in the movement of world-ideas at the present time.  Germans cause foreigners to smile when they prophesy that their culture, their civilization, will become the culture and the civilization of the world.  The sameness of ideas that prevailed in mediaeval times about life and religion—­about this life and the life to come—­was succeeded, and first in Germany, by an enormous diversity of ideas about life and religion, beginning with the Rationalism (or “enlightenment,” as the Germans call it) which set in after the Reformation and the Renaissance; and this diversity again promises—­let us at least hope—­to go back, in one of the great circles that make one think human thought, too, moves in accordance with planetary laws, to a sameness of views among the nations in regard to the real interests of society, which are peace, religious harmony through toleration, commercial harmony through international intercourse, and the mutual goodwill of governments and peoples.  For all this order of ideas the Emperor, notwithstanding his mailed fist and shining armour, stands, and in this spirit both he and the German mind are working.

More than half a century has passed over the Emperor’s head; let us look a little more closely at him as the man and the monarch he is to-day.  Time appears to have dealt gently with him; the heart, one hears it said, never grows bald, and in all but years the Emperor is probably as young and untiring as ever.

His personal appearance has altered little in the last decade.  An observer, who had an opportunity of seeing him at close quarters in 1902, describes him, as he then appeared, as follows:—­

“I was standing within arm’s length of him at Cuxhaven, where we were waiting the landing of Prince Henry, his brother, on his return from America.  The Deutschland had to be warped alongside the quay, and the Emperor, in the uniform of a Prussian general of infantry, meanwhile mixed with the suite and chatted, now to one, now to another, with his usual bonhomie.  I was speaking to the American attache, Captain H——­, when the Emperor came up, and naturally I stood a little to one side.

“The thing that most struck me was the Emperor’s large grey eyes.  As they looked sharply into those of Captain H——­ or glanced in my direction, they seemed to show absolutely no feeling, no sentiment of any kind.  Not that they gave the notion of hardness or falsity.  They were simply like two grey mirrors on which outward things made no impression.

“Two other features did not strike me as anything out of the ordinary, but the whole face had an air of ability, cleverness, briskness, and health.  The Emperor is about middle height, with the body very erect, the walk firm, and is very energetic in his gestures.  I did not notice the shortness of the left arm, but