The dominant feature of his make-up is a restless and tireless physical energy. In this he is perhaps more English than German. The insular tendency of his out-of-door tastes is very marked. Probably there is no gentleman on the Continent who keeps a keener or more interested watch upon the details of English sport, year by year, than William does. Oxford will not soon forget his characteristic telegram to Max Müller, recently, congratulating the University crew upon their victory in the annual race, and every British yachtsman looks forward to this season’s regatta at Cowes with added interest, from the fact that the Emperor intends personally competing with his newly-purchased yacht.
William rides like an Englishman--which is another way of saying that he cuts a better figure in the saddle than most of the other Hohenzollerns, notoriously bad horsemen as a rule, have done. He has all the British passion for the sea and matters maritime. In his speech to the officers of the English fleet at Athens he said that his interest in their navy dated from the earliest days of his boyhood, when he played about Portsmouth dockyard and gained impressions of the vastness and splendour of British shipping which had vividly coloured his imagination for all time. No other German ruler has ever given so much thought to naval matters, and it is his openly-expressed ambition to give the Empire during his reign a fighting fleet which shall rank among the great navies of the world. During the debates in the Reichstag last March on the excessive naval estimates, he sent to the chairman of that special budget committee a copy of an old painting representing the fleet of the Great Elector, with footnotes in his own imperial hand giving the names and armaments of the various vessels, and bearing the inscription: “To Herr von Koscielski, in remembrance of his manly advocacy of my navy, from his grateful Emperor and King.”
William’s love of exercise for its own sake is truly English. He fences admirably, is a skilful boatman, swims and bowls well and with zest, and delights in mountain climbing. No other Prussian Prince has ever been so fond of shooting. Hohenzollern notions of this particular sport have for generations been a matter for derision among Englishmen. Even Carlyle, who will hardly be described as a sportsman, was alive to the grotesque features of the _Parforce Fagd_, that curious institution in the Potsdam Green Forest which owes its origin to Frederic William I. The _Saugarten_ is still there, and young boars, bred in captivity and bereft of their tusks at a tender age, are still released from their pens when the first frosts of autumn fall, and after a start of a few minutes are chased by mounted and gaily caparisoned parties of huntsmen--for all the world like the tame lion hunts of the Sardanapalian decadence pictured for us by the Assyrian palace friezes. But William has never shown much admiration for this pet diversion of the Potsdam officers. His own tastes are for the most laborious and difficult forms of woodland sport, and he is an exceptionally good shot.