And he closed: "We must now go out in search of new spots where we can drive in nails on which to hang our armour."
Early in August the Emperor was called to the death-bed of his mother, the Empress Frederick, at her castle in Cronberg. She died on the afternoon of her son's arrival, on August 5th. The Emperor ordered mourning throughout the Empire for six weeks, and forbade all "public music, entertainments, theatrical or otherwise" until after the funeral. The Empress was buried in the mausoleum attached to the Friedenskirche in Potsdam on the 13th of the month.
The delivery of a famous speech on art by the Emperor in December brings the chronicle of 1901 to a close, but perhaps it will not displease the reader if a new chapter is opened for the purpose of quoting it and of considering the Emperor in what is a traditional Hohenzollern relationship.
Art is a favourite subject of conversation on the Continent, where it is more popularly discussed than in England and where authorities of all kinds are more alive to its educative capabilities. It is eminently "safe" ground, does not savour of gossip, and no one need leave the field of discussion with the feeling that he has been driven from it. Hence it is the salvation of diplomatists who are apprehensive of committing their Governments or themselves when mixing in general society, and it doubtless does good service for the Emperor also upon occasion. Indeed it is a topic on which he speaks willingly and well.
Unfortunately for precision of thought and speech, though useful for the man in the street, the word "art" has been pressed into the service of metaphor more than almost any other word in language. We are told in turn that everything is an art--hair-dressing, salad-dressing (a different kind), lying, flying, dying. The Germans are trying to make an art of life. Whistler wrote about the "Gentle Art of Making Enemies." One hears of "artful hussies" and "artful dodgers." People are described as "artful" in the small diplomacies of intercourse. Jugglers, acrobats, sword-swallowers, "supers" at the theatre, the men who play the elephant in the pantomime would all be mortified if they were not addressed as "artists," In short, everything may be called an art.