ale.  Some of the Emperor’s acts and speeches have postponed, if not precluded, eventual popularity—­his breach with Bismarck, for example, the whole “personal regiment,” and speeches like that at Potsdam in 1891, when he told his recruits that if he had to order them to shoot down their brothers, or even their parents, they must obey without a murmur.  Speeches of this last kind live long in public memory.  In his dealings with his people the Emperor is neither arrogant—­“high-nosed” is the elegant German expression:  “arrogant” is no German word, Prince Buelow would doubtless say—­ towards his subjects, nor are they cringing towards him, though this statement does not exclude the excusable embarrassment an ordinary mortal may be expected to feel in the presence of a monarch.  The Emperor himself desires no “tail-wagging” from his subjects, and though there is something of the autocrat in him, there is nothing of the despot.

Certainly for the present, Germans, with rare exceptions, are satisfied with him.  They are prospering under him.  The shoe pinches here and there, and if it pinches too hard they will cry out and perhaps do more than cry out.  They do not consider the Emperor perfect, but they forgive his errors, and particularly the errors of his impetuous youth, even though on three or four occasions they brought the country into danger.  Monarchy has been defined as a State in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting things:  a republic, as a State in which the attention is divided between many who are all doing uninteresting things:  Germans find their Emperor interesting, and that is a stage on the road to popularity.

The imperial ego, which is quite consistent with the German view of monarchical rule and conformity with the Rechtstaat, is specially advertised by the pictures and statues of the Emperor which are to be found all over Germany, to the apparent exclusion of the pictures and statues of national and local men of distinction.  The Emperor’s picture almost monopolizes the walls of every public and municipal office, every railway-station refreshment-room, every shop, every restaurant throughout the Empire.  Wherever it turns the eye is confronted by the portrait or bust of the Emperor, and if it is not his portrait or bust, it is the portrait or bust of one or other of his ancestors.  An exception should be made in the case of Bismarck, the reproduction of whose rugged features, shaggy eyebrows, and bulky frame are not infrequent; statues and portraits, too, of Moltke and Roon, though much more rarely met with than those of Bismarck, are to be seen, while those of Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Lessing, Wagner, or other German “Immortal,” are still rarer.  Only once, or perhaps twice, in all Germany is there to be found a public statue of Heine—­for Heine was a Jew and said many unpleasant, because true, things about his country.  The travelling foreigner in Germany after a while begins to wonder if he is