The Kaiser’s idea is to meet and counteract this by appealing to the workman’s military recollections and pride. It is difficult for outsiders to realize the potency of this appeal. Americans and Englishmen see the scores of thousands of young Germans who expatriate themselves to escape military service, and assume, therefore, that it must be a hateful thing. To those who look forward to it this may be true. But to the poor German artizan who looks backward upon it this term of service in the army is apt to seem the pleasantest period of his life. By comparison with the hardships of his later independent struggle for existence, he comes to regard this time when he was fed and clothed and instructed and lodged, and wore a uniform, with affectionate regret.
William, with what seems a sound instinct, lays great stress upon keeping alive and strengthening this army spirit. His wish is so to extend a semi-military organization throughout the social structure that every German may continue to feel that he belongs to the army. To this end he encourages the founding in each village of a _Landwehrbezirksverein_, or military club, where veterans and reservists are invited to come and read the papers over their beer and pipes, take charge of anniversary celebrations, promote local shooting festivals, and keep Social Democrats at a healthful distance. This plan is reported to be working well in small places, but it has not been thus far of much service in cities and factory centres, and in Mainz the attempt has just been abandoned owing to the discovery that all the members had become Social Democrats. But it is important to notice that since William has actively interested himself in the condition of these lower social strata, and sharply rated employers and army officers for harsh treatment of their men, the tone of the Socialists in the Reichstag toward him has been quite as civil as that of the other members.
For a young man descended from such phenomenally thrifty people as the Hohenzollerns and Wettins have always been, William has remarkably lavish, not to say prodigal, notions about money. He was left a very rich man by his father’s death, and a complaisant Reichstag shortly thereafter largely increased the amount of his civil list, but for all that prudent Germans shake their heads over the immense schemes of expenditure to which he is already committed. The outlay upon the renovation of the Old Schloss in Berlin, entered upon in the first months of his reign, startled these good souls, but that turned out to be a mere drop in the bucket. The whole park arrangements at Potsdam are to be altered, and the unsightly old Dom--or cathedral--facing the Lustgarten in Berlin, has been torn down to make room for a magnificent ecclesiastical edifice worthy of the German capital. This means a heavy bill of expense, and Berliners hear with mingled emotions that their Royal Opera House is also to come down, to be supplanted by a wonderful new structure rivalling in dimensions and cost the Grand Opera House in Paris.