We are forever talking and writing about the smallness of the world, of how much better we know one another, and of how much more we should love one another, now that we flash photographs and messages to and fro, at a speed of leagues a second. Nothing could be more futile and foolish. These things have emphasized our differences, they have done nothing to realize our likeness to one another. We are as far from one another as in the days, late in the tenth century, when they complained in England that men learned fierceness from the Saxon of Germany, effeminacy from the Fleming, and drunkenness from the Dane.
As probably the outstanding figure and best-known, superficially known, man in the world, the German Emperor has escaped the notice of very few people who notice anything. His likeness is everywhere, and gossip about him is on every tongue. He is as familiar to the American as Roosevelt, to the Englishman as Lloyd-George, to the Frenchman as Dreyfus, to the Russian as his Czar, and to the Chinese and Japanese as their most prominent political figure. And yet I should say that he is comparatively little known, either externally or internally, as he is.
It is perhaps the fate of those of most influence to be misunderstood. Of this, I fancy, the Emperor does not complain. Indeed, those feeble folk who complain of being misunderstood, ought to console themselves with the thought that practically all our imperishable monuments, are erected to the glory of those whom we condemned and criticised; starved and stoned; burned and crucified, when we had them with us.
William II, German Emperor and King of Prussia, was born January 27, 1859, and became German Emperor June 15, 1888. He is, therefore, in the prime of life, and looks it. His complexion and eyes are as clear as those of an athlete, and his eyes, and his movements, and his talk are vibrating with energy. He stands, I should guess, about five feet eight or nine, has the figure and activity of an athletic youth of thirty, and in his hours of friendliness is as careless in speech, as unaffected in manner, as lacking in any suspicion of self- consciousness, or of any desire to impress you with his importance, as the simplest gentleman in the land.