In France, for example, that thrifty and individualistic folk made a complete failure of the attempt to foist contributory old-age pensions upon them, and I doubt whether such sumptuary legislation can succeed with us. That, however, is neither here nor there. The gist of the matter is, that because such things succeed in Germany, gives not the slightest reason for supposing that they will succeed with us. If this outline of their history and this sketch of their government have done nothing else, it must have made this clear. It may also help to show how vapid is the talk about what the German people will or will not do; whether they will or will not have war, for example. We shall have war when the German Kaiser touches a button and gives an order, and the German people will have no more to say in the matter than you and I.
The casual observer of life in England would find himself forced to write of sport, even as in India he would write of caste, as in America he would note the undue emphasis laid upon politics. In Germany, wherever he turns, whether it be to look at the army, to inquire about the navy, to study the constitution, or to disentangle the web of present-day political strife; to read the figures of commercial and industrial progress, or the results of social legislation; to look on at the Germans at play during their yachting week at Kiel, or their rowing contests at Frankfort, he finds himself face to face with the Emperor.
The student visits Berlin, or Potsdam, or Wilhelmshöhe; or with a long stride finds himself on the docks at Hamburg or Bremen, or beside the Kiel Canal, or in Kiel harbor facing a fleet of war-ships; or he lifts his eyes into the air to see a dirigible balloon returning from a voyage of two hundred and fifty miles toward London over the North Sea, and the Emperor is there. Is it the palace hidden in its shrubbery in the country; is it the clean, broad streets and decorations of the capital; is it a discussion of domestic politics, or a question of foreign politics, the Emperor's hand is there. His opinion, his influence, what he has said or has not said, are inextricably interwoven with the woof and web of German life.
We may like him or dislike him, approve or disapprove, rejoice in autocracy or abominate it, admire the far-reaching discipline, or regret the iron mould in which much of German life is encased, but for the moment all this is beside the mark. Here is a man who in a quarter of a century has so grown into the life of a nation, the most powerful on the continent, and one of the three most powerful in the world, that when you touch it anywhere you touch him, and when you think of it from any angle of thought, or describe it from any point of view, you find yourself including him.