New-York tribune., 1879-06-11
A GOLDEN UEDDING.

A golden wedding is to be celebrated to-day
in palace. Fifty years ago son OF FRED
erck William III. married daughter OF the
Grand Duke of Saxe-Wemar. The BRIDE
groom was then in his thirty-third year; he
was thorough soldier, although he did not
look like one, and he had served in the clos
ing campaign against Napoleon. 1t was as
mueh of a love match as Royal marriage
ever is. for its importance was not appre-
ciated at the time Who could have imagined
that that officer OF the Guards was destined to
witness the close of two reigns, his fathers
and his brothers, and when the span OF his
life should be doubled, to become Kaiser as
we'll as Kng2 1t was not until nine years
after the Royal wedding that Prince William
first met at a Court ball the young lawyer
who in the fulness of time was to become
Chancellor of the Empire. The Bismarck OF
1929 was a mischievous schOOlboy i'll Berlin;
Moltke was promising officer taking notes
at the seat of war in the Balkan peninsula; Prus-
sia was feeble misgoverned State at the mercy
of Austria; Germany was what Metternlch
had coptemptuously described as geograph-
ical conception and the question, Was lst
I" das Deutsche VaterlandT had scarcely been
asked. much less answered. What changes
has the whirligIg Of time wrought! The bells
for the Golden Wedding ring ont to-day upon
new Germany in the heart OF new
Europe The Prince William of 1929 is en-
shrined in the affections of the Fatherland as
the noblest of mOnarchs. He has lived to
take up the sword of Frederick the Great,
and by striking down Austria has enabled
Prussia TO become the strongest military
| Power ON the Continent. He has overthrown
a second Napoleonic Empire that menaced
the peace of Europe and the political devel-
opment of France. He has been the most
stalwart defender of the Protestant faith, and
has not yet gone to Canossa. He has made
| Germany more powerful than she was III The
| days Of Charles the Fifth.
The day, however, has not yet come when
the services rendered by the Kaiser to the
Fatherland can be estimated anght; for
great as his sagacity has been in choosing
| Ministers and Generals and in founding an
Empire on the basis of universal suffrage he
! has not been farsghted i'll all respects.
This IS not the time for reckoning his short
comings In the cause of German democracy
and constitutional liberty. At the worst,
these have been faults of the head rather
than of the heart. He has loved Germany,
and Germany has loved and honored him. not
alone for what he has done for her, but also
for the purity of his character and the genu-
ineness of his domestic virtues. In the Empress.
moreover, he has always found helpmeet
worthy of himself. Goethe referred in one of
| his letters to the "many sided and harmo-
"nious culture of the Princess Augusta" She
has educated her children and endowed them
with her own virtues and culture. She has
done not a little for science, letters, art, and
nractical benevolence. She has organized a
| hospital service in wartime; she has endowed
asylums and seminaries she has built model
| tenements in Berlin she has been the noblest
and most useful lady in the Fatherland. Let
the bells ring out on this golden wedding
i day. Even at this distance, with the throngs
of German-AmeIicans in our cities, the echoes
are caught up and repeated anew.