Yet something may be advanced in favour of the Emperor. His recommendation, for in fact it was and could be only that, was quite in keeping with the traditions of his office and the people's own view of royal government. The speech, as was admitted, was suggested by no mere dilettante's vanity, but, as is evident from his words at the Art Museum, by the conviction that just as it is the imperial duty to provide an efficient army and navy, so it is the imperial duty to use every personal and private, as well as every public and official, effort to provide the people with an art as efficient, as honest, and as clean; and it was inevitable that the art the Emperor recommended was that which he believed, and still believes, to be in conformity with the ideals, as he interprets them, or would have them to be, of the Germanic race.
The speech itself is interesting as showing the Emperor's attitude towards art and artists and his personal conception of art and its nature. His attitude is evidently that of the art-loving prince of whom he speaks in the address, a royal Maecenas or di Medici, who gathers artists round him; but he means to use them, not so much perhaps for art's sake, as for the instruction and elevation of his folk. A very laudable aim; only, as it happens, the folk in this matter desire themselves to decide what is improving and elevating for them and what is not. They are not willing to leave the exclusive choice to the Emperor.
The Emperor, again, would give the artist the freedom to put into his work "that from himself which any artist must, if he is to give the work the stamp of his own individuality." This attitude, too, is admirable, but on the other hand lies the danger, such is poor human nature, that the individuality will be that which the Emperor wishes it to be, not the artist's independent individuality To the foreign eye all the Hohenzollern statues in the Siegesallee, with the exception possibly of two or three, seem to have much the same individuality, though that again may be due to the nature of the subject and the foreigner's inherent and ineradicable predispositions.
Thirdly, art, the Emperor says, can only be educative when it elevates instead of descending into the gutter. Hogarth descended into the gutter. Gustav Doré depicts the horrors of hell. Yet both Hogarth and Doré were great artists, and educative too. The Emperor was here thinking of the Berlin Secession, a school just then starting, eccentric indeed and far from "classical," but which nevertheless has since produced several fine artists. The Emperor, it would appear, thinks that the antique classical school is the true and only good school for the artist. Very likely most artists will agree with him-- at least as a foundation; but the belief, it also appears, is not considered in Germany, or outside of it, to justify the Emperor, as Emperor, in discouraging all other schools and particularly the efforts of modern artists in their non-classical imaginings.