which he pleaded. He met many German singing societies and target companies and there was much enthusiasm over Goethe and Schiller and Kultur in general; but when it came to the question closest to the heart of official Berlin, it was discovered to the immense disgust of Unter den Linden that Americans of German parentage declined the patronage of a German Consul, refused to welcome Prince Henry as a brother German, but insisted vigorously on their desire to be regarded as through and through Americans welcoming a friendly foreigner. In vain did Prince Henry allude to the historic friendship binding our two countries; in vain did he point to the many degrees of Ph.D. granted at low cost to American students; in vain did he present Harvard University with many cases of mythical heroes; in vain did the Kaiser send a statue of the Great Frederic to Washington.

When the great war was on, there was immense clamor in the press against a Frederic the Great monument under the shadow of our legislative halls. Some denounced the effigy as that of a militarist and the rest held that such a statue was a daily insult to our government. We expected that a mob would shortly demolish this token of Kaiser kindliness as had happened in the case of George III at the outbreak of our War of Independence. One day, having business with

Army General Staff officers, I drove up to that building, and found a sentry pacing up and down in front of the much abused monument. We were then at war with Germany.

So I pointed to the "Alter Fritz" and asked as an innocent stranger if the sentry could tell me the name of that very familiar figure in cocked hat, riding boots and long stick. The sentry was good natured and looked hard and shook his head: "Sure, Boss, I don't know! Ye'd better tackle one of them guys inside!''

If the Great Frederic was intended to corrupt the American army, he was shamefully neglecting his work on that occasion. This work of art, was shortly afterwards taken down; not by the mob but by constituted authority. The curious may find it in some cellar of our Capital where it is protected from the Potomac fogs and where it must ever offer problems for a patriotic American to unravel.

We have statues to Steuben and DeKalb who came to America as adventurers in search of salary because Frederic the Great had no use for their services in his army. Neither of these men did anything to distinguish them from the hundreds of native born Americans who served throughout the seven years of the Revolutionary War and who died in poverty.

Frederic the Great helped this country throughout our struggle for Independence; he expressed himself

energetically against the recruiting of mercenaries in Germany and refused to allow them to march across his territory unless they paid the tax usually levied on cattle going to the slaughter pens.

Moreover the Great Frederic asked no salary for his work on behalf of American Independence.

Then why not put Steuben in the cellar and restore Frederic to an honorable pedestal, just to let the world know that we are a grateful people, in spite of the World War.

But this is a digression. No one admired the great Iron Chancelor more than his young pupil whe ascended the throne in 1888. Moreover that year 1888 was one so crowded with momentous happenings that a stronger character than that of William II might have been pardoned for a political tort at some point or other. He stood at the close of a great historical era and was opening a new one under conditions most perplexing for a Prussian.

On the one hand, the venerable William I who had lived more than 90 years in the full possession of his faculties; who had fought against the Great Napoleon; who had seen Prussia laid waste after Jena; who had fled with Queen Louisa, his mother, to Tilsit in that dreary winter of 1806-7; who had entered Paris in triumph in 1814, in 1815 and finally in 1871. The Venerable William hated war as much as did the

Philosophical Frederic; and so soon as he had achieved what he regarded as essential-the unity of Germany and protection from future invasion, he wished for only a long life of rest. Old William, in harmony with his contemporary warriors and statesmen, was satisfied on land and took little if any interest in tropical colonies or over sea ventures. William II in these matters diverged from the tradition of his house, altho he made a poor excuse by pretending that once in a hazy past there had been a Hohenzollern attempt on the African coast under the so-called Great Elector. William the Venerable and Bismarck had a wholesome contempt for government by majorities; on the contrary, their experience in the Revolution of 1848 had confirmed their faith in government by one ostensible chief-unity of command, as we would say in military parlance. Both believed in the rule of an Autocrathowbeit they held that faith because they regarded the monarch as the only force capable of being benevolent and strong at the same time.

On the other side was the Emperor Frederic who had for wife the gifted daughter of Queen Victoria, a sister of the beloved Edward VII. Emperor Frederic and his wife were each cast in modern mould, where Bismarck and his royal master embodied a modernized feudalism. Frederic ascended the throne on the death of his venerable father in 1888. He was a

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dying man and lived but 100 days thereafter. But those days nearly made a palace revolution; for the court and the army chiefs looked upon Frederic the Noble as a conservative banker would regard an anarchist mob leader; they dreaded the reign of one who had openly consorted with men of political independence and whose wife was known to have praised a parliamentary system of government. These details which today sound childish were in 1888 material for political earthquakes likely to drench the country in the blood of a new civil war.

Between these eddies and whirlpools the young Kaiser had to paddle his canoe. He loved his father and mother from a domestic point of view; but politi cally he saw no salvation in democracy or even in representative government. Bismarck was his model statesman and William I his ideal King.

Once, I think it was in 1891, I urged the Kaiser to make war on Russia. His army was in excellent state; his fellow Germans in Russia were being shamefully persecuted by the religious authorities backed by the police; the Poles were suffering equally from administrative discrimination and the state of Europe was then such as to have promised him success and new territory at less cost than the Great Frederic expended for Silesia.