"most important duties of the German Emperor lay in the domain of the military and political security of the nation externally, and internally in the supervision of the carrying out of imperial laws."
The highest of these laws, he explained, was the Imperial Constitution and "to preserve and protect the Constitution, and in especial the rights it gives to the legislative bodies, to every German, but also to the Emperor and the federated states," he considered "among the most honourable duties of the Emperor."
While the order of these addresses is different to what it would be in England, it entirely accords with the spirit of the Prussian monarchy and the political system of the German people. Settled in the heart of Europe, the nation rests on the army, and it is hardly too much to say that, from the Emperor's point of view, possibly also from the popular German point of view, the interests of the army must be considered before the interests of the rest of the population. An English monarch, who issued his first address to the British navy, would be as justified in doing so by the real necessities of Great Britain as a German Emperor who first addresses the German army is justified by the real necessities of Germany; for the British navy is as vital to the British as the German army is to the German nation. In England, however, the monarch's respect for the people and Parliament takes precedence of his respect for the army, not _vice versa_ as in Germany.
In a speech from the throne to the Prussian Diet the Emperor took the Constitutional Oath: "I swear to hold firmly and unbrokenly to the Constitution of the Kingdom and to rule in agreement with it and the laws ... so help me God!" and went on to proclaim the continuance in Prussia and the Empire of his grandfather's and father's policy and work. He said at the same time, while undertaking not to make the People uneasy by trying to extend Crown rights, that he would take care that the constitutional rights of the Crown were respected and used, and that he meant to hand them over unimpaired to his successor. He concluded by saying that he would always bear in mind the words of Frederick the Great, who described himself as the "first servant of the State."