icon 0
icon TOP UP
rightIcon
icon Reading History
rightIcon
icon Sign out
rightIcon
icon Get the APP
rightIcon
William of Germany

William of Germany

icon

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTORY.

Word Count: 2597    |    Released on: 30/11/2017

e, Knight of the Garter and Field-Marshal of Great Britain, etc., was born in Berlin on January 27, 1859, and ascended the throne on June 15, 1888. He is

own. In Germany, paradoxical though it may sound to English ears, there is neither a government nor a people. The word "government" occurs only once in the Imperial Constitution, the Magna Cha

" who neither claim to be, nor apparently wish to be, a "people" in the English sense. The German folk have their traditions as the English people have traditions, and their place in t

time only King of Prussia) was an absolute, or almost absolute, monarch, supported by soldiers and police, and his wishes were practically law to the folk. In that year, however, owing to the influence of the French Revolution, the King by the gift of a Constitution, abandoned part of his

d argument of controversy, there now arose a dozen or more parties in the Parliament, each with its own set o

sions, as they do to-day, sometimes accepting and sometimes rejecting their own or the King's suggestions about law-making. Generally speaking, the relation is not unlike that established by the dame

ies of the Left, or Liberal parties. Between them sat the members of the Centre, who, as representing the Catholic populations of Germany-roughly, twenty-two mil

l system of their own making and began to show a strong desire to take all power from the King and from the Parliament too. They agitated and organized, and organized and agitated, until at length, havin

f Hohenzollern, as a present, a folk. The Hohenzollerns gave the folk, as a present, a parliament, a power to make laws without the power of executing them. The Social Democrats

and of administering them, have long ago been taken by the people from the King and entrusted by them to a parliament, the majority of whom, called the Government, represent the majority of the electing voters. In the case of Germany the folk have surrendered some of what an Englishman w

d the English people, the common weal and the fair fame of their respective countries, the t

ter and policy. One of the most important results of the character and policy is the state of Anglo-German relations; and the writer is convinced that if the character

t in the minds, or rather the imaginations, of two great peoples, the delusion that the highest national interes

, at standing by her subjects in all parts of the world if subjected to injury or insult, and at increasing her prestige, and with it her power for good, in the family of nations. The ordinary Englishman immediately cries out that Germany is seeking to dispute his maritime supremacy, to rob him of his colonies, and to appropriate his trade. Is it not conceivable that both Governments are telling the truth, and that their designs are no more and no less than the Governments represent them to be? The necessity for Great Britain possessing an all-powerful fleet that will keep her in touch with her colonies if she is not to lose them altogether, is self-evident, and understood by even the most Chauvinistic German. The necessity for Germany's possessing a fleet strong enough to make her rights respected is as self-evident. Moreover, if Germany's fleet is a luxury, as Mr. Winston Churchill says it is, she deserves and can afford it. As a nation she has prospered and grown great, not by a policy of war and conquest, but by hard work, thrift, self-d

ay be bludgeoned and robbed by their neighbours; that the hundreds of treaties solemnly signed by contracting nations are mere pieces of waste paper only testifying to the profundity and extent of human hypocrisy; that churches and cathedrals have been built, universities, colleges, and schools founded, only to fill the empty air with noise; that the printing presses of all countries have been occupied turning out myriads of books and papers which have had no effect on the reason or conscience of mankind; that nations learn nothing from experience; and to each supposing that he and his fellow-countrymen alone are the monopolists of wisdom, honour, truth, justice, charity-in short, of all the attributes and blessings of civilization. Is it not time to discard such error, or must the nations always suspect each other? To finish with our introducti

ut war?-almost inconceivable; since wars, not peace, are the principal materials with which it deals and supply it with most of its vitality and interest-must

ers live in bras

te in

cathedral of Cologne? In this regard the biographer

general importance to the world since he mounted the throne, and the world's attention has been fastened without intermission on his words and conduct. The rise of the modern German Empire is the salient fact o

two or three occasions early in the reign accounts were published of scandals at the Court. They may not have been wholly baseless, but none of them directly involved the Emperor, or even raised a d

ut if so, it has been to describe some of the more important events of the reign in their totality. He has also felt it necessary, as writing for English readers of a country not their own, to combine a portion of

Claim Your Bonus at the APP

Open