The Emperor closed one of his naval lectures with an anecdote which the papers reported next day as being received with "stormy amusement." It was about the metacentrum, the centre of gravity in ship construction. The Emperor told of his having asked an old sea lieutenant to explain to him the metacentrum. "I received the answer," said the Emperor, "that he did not know very exactly himself--it was a secret. 'All I can say is,' the old seaman went on, 'that if the metacentrum was in the topmast, the ship would over-turn.'" The success of a jest, one is told, lies in the ear of the hearer. Possibly something of the "stormy amusement" may have been called forth by the reflection that the imperial metacentrum had on occasion got misplaced.
In addition to the natural and accidental predispositions of the Emperor, certain general considerations, which imposed themselves irresistibly on all men's attention as the century drew to its close, impelled him to more energetic action. A student of the history of other countries as well as his own, and a watchful observer of the tendencies of the time, he felt that the young Empire was incomplete as long as it was without a navy corresponding in size and power to its army, the organization of which had been completed. With its army alone he regarded the Empire as a colossus, no doubt, but a colossus standing on one leg, and was convinced that if the Empire was to be a success it must have a navy at least able to withstand attack by any of his continental neighbours and potential enemies.
On ascending the throne the Emperor was naturally most occupied with the internal situation of his new inheritance, and spent a good deal of his time railing at Social Democracy and the press, explaining the nature of his Heaven-appointed kingship, and rousing his somewhat lethargic people to a sense of their power and possibilities; but he found a moment in 1891 to write under a photograph he gave the retiring Postmaster-General Stephan:
"The world, at the end of the nineteenth century, stands under the star of commerce; commerce breaks down the barriers which separate the peoples and creates new relations between the nations."
Then the idea slumbered in his mind for a few years, while he continued to make his own people restless with criticism, perhaps deserved, of their sluggishness, their pessimism, their party strife, and foreign peoples equally restless with phrases like "_nemo me impune lacessit_"; until the idea came suddenly to utterance in 1897, when, on seeing the figure of Neptune on a monument to the Emperor William, he broke out: "The trident should be in our grip!" From this time, and for the next few years, the growth of the navy may be said to have never long been far from his thoughts. In sending Prince Henry to Kiautschau at the close of 1898 he made the remark that "imperial power means sea power, and sea power and imperial power are dependent on each other." Nine months afterwards at Stettin he used a phrase alone sufficient to keep his name alive in history: "Our future lies on the water!"