The first so-called indiscretion of the present Emperor was magnificent. He dismissed Bismarck two years after he came to the throne. If you have ever been the owner of a yacht and your sailing-master has grown to be a tyrant, and you have taken your courage in your hand and bundled him over the side, you have had in a microcosmic way the sensations of such an experience.
It is said that Bismarck, then seventy-five years old, and since 1862 accustomed to undisputed power, demurred to the wish of the Emperor that the other ministers should have access to him directly, and not as heretofore only through the chancellor. It is said too that the matter-of-fact and somewhat cynical Bismarck, had but scanty respect for the mystical view of his grandfather as a saint, that the Emperor everywhere proclaimed. In 1896, the 20th of February, in speaking of his grandfather, he refers to him as: "The Emperor William, that personality which has become for us in some sort that of a saint."
Bismarck, too, objected to the Emperor's policy as regards the treatment of, and the legislation for, the workingmen. On February the 5th, 1890, he writes to Bismarck: "It is the duty of the state to regulate the duration and conditions of work in such manner that the health and the morality of the workingman may be preserved, and that his needs may be satisfied and his desire for equality before the law assured."
"Now this is the tale of the Council the German Kaiser decreed,
"And the young king said:'I have found it, the road to the rest ye seek:
The strong shall wait for the weary, and the hale shall halt for the weak;
With the even tramp of an army where no man breaks from the line,
Ye shall march to peace and plenty, in the bond of brotherhoodsign!'"
Whatever the reasons, the criticisms, or the causes, the man whom we have been describing was as certain to dismiss Bismarck from office, as a bird is certain to fly and not to swim. The ruler who at a banquet May the 4th, 1891, proclaimed: "There is only one master of the nation: and that is I, and I will not abide any other"; and later, on the 16th of November, in an address to recruits said: "I need Christian soldiers, soldiers who say their Pater Noster. The soldier should not have a will of his own, but you should all have but one will and that is my will; there is but one law for you and that is mine." Again, in addressing the recruits for the navy on the 5th of March, 1895, he said to them: "Just as I, as Emperor and ruler, consecrate my life and my strength to the service of the nation, so you are pledged to give your lives to me." Such a man could not share his rule with Bismarck.