not in some far Eastern country where ancestor-worship obtains, and where one tremendous personality overshadows, obscures, and obliterates all the rest.  In truth, however, this is not the lesson of the imperial images for the foreigner.  They teach him that he is in a country with a system of government and views of the State different from his own, that the Empire is ruled in a military, not a civic spirit, and that the counterfeit presentment of the Emperor, always in dazzling uniform, is the sign of the national acceptance of system, views, and spirit.

A similar lesson is taught by the Emperor’s speeches.  In England the King rarely speaks in public, and then with well-calculated brevity and reserve.  In five words he will open a museum and with a sentence unveil a monument.  The Emperor’s speeches fill four stout volumes—­and he is only fifty-four.  The speeches deal with every sort of topic, and have been delivered in all parts of the Empire—­now to Parliament, now to his assembled generals, now at the celebration of some national or individual jubilee, now at the dedication of a building or the opening of a bridge.  The style is always clear and logical, in this respect contrasting favourably with the German style of twenty years ago, when the language wriggled from clause to clause in vermiform articulations until the thought found final expression in a mob of participles and infinitives.  Metaphors abound in the speeches, some of them slightly far-fetched, but others of uncommon beauty, appropriateness, and pith.  There is no brilliant employment of words, but not seldom one comes across such terse and happy phrases as the famous “We stand under the star of commerce,” “Our future lies on the water,” “We demand a place in the sun.”

On the English reader the speeches will be apt to pall, unless he is thoroughly saturated with Prussian historic, military, and romantic lore and can place himself mentally in the position of the Emperor.  The tone, never quite detached from consciousness of the imperial ego, hardly ever descends to the level of familiar conversation nor rises to heights of eloquence that carry away the hearer.  With three or four exceptions, there is no argumentation in the speeches, for they are not meant to persuade or convince, but to enjoin and command.  They do not contain any of the important and interesting facts and figures of which, nevertheless, the Emperor’s mind must be full, and they are wanting in wit and humour, though nature has endowed the Emperor with both.

On the other hand, it should be remembered that they are the speeches of an Emperor, not of a statesman.  The speeches have no political timeliness or object save that of rousing and directing imperial spirit among the people by appeals to their imagination and patriotism.  Had the Emperor been actuated by the spirit of a Minister or statesman, he would have been far more alive to the fact than he appears to have been, that every word he uttered would instantly find an echo in the Parliament, Press, and Stock Exchange of all other countries.