William of Germany | Page 3

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-denial, fidelity to international
engagements, well-planned instruction, and first-rate organization. Why
should she not, if she thinks it advisable and is willing to spend the
money on it, supply herself with an arm of defence in proportion to her
size, her prosperity, and her desert? It may be that, as Mr. Norman
Angell holds, the entire policy of great armaments is based on
economic error; but unless and until it is clear that the German navy is
intended for aggression, its growth may be viewed by the rest of the
world with equanimity, and by the Englishman, as a connoisseur in
such matters, with admiration as well. A man may buy a motor-car
which his friends and neighbours think must be costly and pretentious
beyond his means; but that is his business; and if the man finds that,
owing to good management and industry and skill, his business is
growing and that a motor-car is, though in some not absolutely clear
and definite way, of advantage to him in business and satisfying to his
legitimate pride--why on earth should he not buy or build it?
The truth is that if our ordinary Englishman and German were to sit
down together, and with the help of books, maps, and newspapers,
carefully and without prejudice, consider the annals of their respective
countries for the last sixteen years with a view to establishing the
causes of their delusion, they could hardly fail to confess that it was
due to neither believing a word the other said; to each crediting the
other with motives which, as individuals and men of honesty and
integrity in the private relations of life, each would indignantly
repudiate; to each assuming the other to be in the condition of
barbarism mankind began to emerge from nineteen hundred years ago;
to both supposing that Christianity has had so little influence on the
world that peoples are still compelled to live and go about their daily

work armed to the teeth lest they may 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 introduction, and
notwithstanding that qui s'excuse s'accuse, the biographer may be
permitted to say a few words on his own behalf. Inasmuch as the
subject of his biography is still, as has been said, happily alive, and is,
moreover, in the prime of his maturity, his life cannot be reviewed as a
whole nor the ultimate consequences of his character and policy be
foretold. The biographer of the living cannot write with the detachment
permissible to the historian of the dead. No private correspondence of
the Emperor's is available to throw light on his more intimate personal
disposition and relationships. There have been many rumours of war
since his accession, but no European war of great importance; and if a
few minor campaigns in tropical countries be excepted, Germany for
over forty years, thanks largely to the Emperor, has enjoyed the
advantages of peace.
From the pictorial and sensational point of view continuous peace is a
drawback for the biographer no less than