In January, 1901, the Emperor was called to England by the sudden, and, as it was to prove, fatal illness of his grandmother, Queen Victoria. His journey to Osborne, where he arrived just in time to be recognized by the dying Queen, and his abandonment of the idea, impressive and almost sacred to a Prussian King and the Prussian people, of being present on his birthday, January 27th, at the bicentenary celebration of the foundation of the Prussian Kingdom, made a deep and sympathetic impression on the people of England. Usually on State occasions the Emperor does not display a countenance of good humour, or indeed of any sentiment save perhaps that of a sense of dignity; but on the occasion in question, as he rode in the uniform of a British Field-Marshal beside Edward VII, his looks were those of genuine sorrow. Public sympathy was not lessened when it became known that he had mentioned the pride he felt in being privileged to wear the uniform of two such soldiers of renown as the Duke of Wellington and Lord Roberts; and added that the privilege would be highly estimated by the whole German army. It was a chivalrous remark, the offspring of a chivalrous disposition.
The Emperor had hardly returned to Germany when, on February 6th, the only attack ever made on his person occurred in Bremen. He had been at a banquet in the town hall, and was being driven through the illuminated streets to the railway station to return to Berlin, when a half-witted locksmith's apprentice of nineteen, Dietrich Weiland by name, flung a piece of railway iron at him with such good aim that it struck him on the face immediately under the right eye, inflicting a deep and nasty, but not dangerous wound. The Emperor proceeded with his journey, the doctors attending to his injury in the train, and in a few weeks he was well again. Weiland was sent to a criminal lunatic asylum. The attempt had, apparently, nothing to do with Anarchism or Nihilism or the Social Democracy. When the Emperor alluded to it afterwards in his speech to the Diet, he referred it to a general diminution of respect for authority.
"Respect for authority," he said to the Diet,
"is wanting. In this regard all classes of the population are to blame. Particular interests are looked to, not the general well-being of the folk. Criticism of the measures of the Government and Throne takes the coarsest and most injurious forms--and hence the errors and demoralization of our youth. Parliament must help here, and a change must be made, beginning with the schools."