The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-12-29
DER KhIsER voN DEUTSCHLAND.

how DtL @ JHS WOllu OuduboS! ihAh OuCS
again TO the shouts of the chiefs of the tribes
as they raise Tchengis Khan on their shields
on the field Of battle, and salute him Emperor
Of the World That is one view Of this eleva-
ton of King William to the Imperial throne,
and a poetical one; but then it is also cyni-
cal and partially untrue one. It would be
far truer to fall back on much more prosaic
morality, to repeat sentence which would
do for q copybook, and say, see how far one
gets by the aid of even humble everyday
virtue like fidelity to ones work; or to
contrast, after Hogarth's fashion, the Haps-
burgs and the Hohenzollerns, the Idle
and the Industrious Apprentices to the trade
of governing mankind. The condition OF
existence for the Kaisers after the Thirty
Years war ended was that they should be-
come again what the Roman Caesar was sup
posed to have been-the large-hearted arbiter
of mankind, the ultimate Judge to whom ma
tions when wronged could appeal, sove-
reign to whom kings could bow without loss
of dignity, or fear That the decision would be
aught but fair award. That was the rGGS0B
d'etTe of that ''Roman" Kaisership of which
the House of Austria was so proud, of that
pretension to such precedence among sove-
reigns as a sovereign has among his mobiles,
of that antique and stately ceremonial which
conquering kings vstrove in vain to
relax, and which popes could not
break through. The Hapsburg Kaisers
saw this was their function, always
claimed this position as theirs, and persist
emily refused to perform the work for which
this transcendent state was assigned to them.
Great or little, Charles V or Charles VI,
reformers like Joseph or reactionaries like
Francis, they were steadily selfish, perse-
veringly unjust, unanimously narrow, gov
erned kindly only in their own States, used
their semi-divine claims to obedience only
to sggrandize themselves; could no more be
trusted to arbitrate between States, or creeds,
or even men, than the most corrupt of judges
or the most fanatic of priests. They could
be bribed into injustice by the hope of ter
ritory, driven into it by the threat of
bishop, or deluded into it bylany worldly-wise
and fiattering diplomatist. And so when
the first storm came, they saw they had no
meaning, and resigned that wonderful ''Ro-
mische" crown, link of the old and new
civilizations, symbol of the claim to the
de jure sovereignty of earth, and skunk away
mere Emp srors of Austria; and when the
second storm came were driven even from
German position, flung out of Germany,
made to resign even the hope of primacy
among their former vassals. The condition
of existence for the Hohenzollerns, on the
other hand, with their long strips of sandy
provinces and four millions of people and ab-
sence of all hereditary rights, was that they
owners, or traffic-managers, or non-commis-
stoned officers; should organise their ''hands'
so as to get the largest amount of result from
the smallest amount of expense, should ac-
Cumulate and not squander property of all
kinds, should actually do the work they were
made kings to do. Up to their lights they
did it all faithfully, laboriously, persistently.
They drilled their hands with such stern
steadiness, and yet such justice, SO far IS
nit thar &c lvn- 1oti Al.
Obeyed as if served with machines, and yet
with devoted willingness. Their armies,
badly paid, cruelty disciplined, little
rewarded, fought for them as the
soldiers of great monarchs have seldom
fought; their greatest leaders, men who had
won pitched battles, bore rebuke like chill
dren; their half-starved, close-watched civil
servants actually governed as few bureaucrats
attempt to govern; their diplomatists, unre-
warded with rank or wages, or even praise,
trioked or threatened, bullied or cajoled,
with unrivalled fidelity and success. The
line never produced in it man of genius
for even Frederick was but fair general of
division and able manager of property-but
every man of it save one gave himself to his
labor, worked at his trade, would have eff
cheney and did have it; would be master,
but never took masters ease; if ne got new
property, made it a reason not for enjoyment
but for toiling the more on that Their
ideal, state organized like camp or fac
tory, was not perhaps high one; but it was
honestly their ideal, and they realized it by
means which, Though often utterly bad were
but once bad by the standard of their own
age, or of that sturdy "bacon-and- green's
conscience" by which the most of
them were guided. The one infdel
among them died worn out with toll, never
having done less than eight hours work a
day. The one dreamy mystic among them
rejected the Imperial throne when actually in
his hand, because he thought only kings had
moral right to give it him! And now the
hour having arrived, the simplest, solidest,
perhaps even stolidest of them although
there must be flashes of deep insight in him
too-having reached the reward of all their
labor and all the devotion they had secured
in their great servants, having used the huge
armaments they had amassed, and the credit
they had built up, and the property they had
gathered, to such purpose that his people
scarcely lament either lives or treasure,
heavily mounts the steps of the Imperial
Throne; turns frowning face to the shout
ing crowd, and reluctantly seats himself upon
the pinnacle of the world. 81 had rather
be King of Prussia" says King William,
as they place on his head the crown
which makes him, but seventh from the
little Kur-furst of those sandy steppes out
there in the far northeast, king of kings
He is a strange and somewhat dim figure,
that old man who has never been despot in
the sense of wishing to secure his will by
pure volition, but who said, 81 will be pivot
of the State, as who should say, 81 will be
master in my house," who has been 30 hated
and so loved, whose stubbornness made an
af.,lat horxa