and notwithstanding that qui s’excuse s’accuse, the biographer may be permitted to say a few words on his own behalf.  Inasmuch as the subject of his biography is still, as has been said, happily alive, and is, moreover, in the prime of his maturity, his life cannot be reviewed as a whole nor the ultimate consequences of his character and policy be foretold.  The biographer of the living cannot write with the detachment permissible to the historian of the dead.  No private correspondence of the Emperor’s is available to throw light on his more intimate personal disposition and relationships.  There have been many rumours of war since his accession, but no European war of great importance; and if a few minor campaigns in tropical countries be excepted, Germany for over forty years, thanks largely to the Emperor, has enjoyed the advantages of peace.

From the pictorial and sensational point of view continuous peace is a drawback for the biographer no less than for the historian.  What would history be without war?—­almost inconceivable; since wars, not peace, are the principal materials with which it deals and supply it with most of its vitality and interest—­must it also be admitted, its charm?  For what are Hannibal or Napoleon or Frederick the Great remembered?—­for their wars, and little else.  Shakespeare has it that—­

     “Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues
     We write in water.”

Who, asks Heine, can name the artist who designed the cathedral of Cologne?  In this regard the biographer of an emperor is almost as dependent as the historian.

The biography of an emperor, again, must be to a large extent, the history of his reign, and in no case is this more true than in that of Emperor William.  But he has been closely identified with every event of general importance to the world since he mounted the throne, and the world’s attention has been fastened without intermission on his words and conduct.  The rise of the modern German Empire is the salient fact of the world’s history for the last half-century, and accordingly only from this broader point of view will the Emperor’s future biographer, or the historian of the future, be able to do him or his Empire justice.

Lastly, another difficulty, if one may call it so, experienced equally by the biographer and the historian, is the fact that the life of the Emperor has been blameless from the moral standpoint.  On two or three occasions early in the reign accounts were published of scandals at the Court.  They may not have been wholly baseless, but none of them directly involved the Emperor, or even raised a doubt as to his respectability or reputation.  Take from history—­or from biography for that matter—­the vices of those it treats of, and one-third, perhaps one-half, of its “human interest” disappears.