William, with all his common-sense and cleverness, has inherited from his ancestress, Queen Louise, and one might almost say from his grand-uncle, King Frederick William IV., a very strongly developed tendency towards idealism.  It was to this phase of his nature that the recommendation of Professor Hintzpeter particularly appealed, and the more he considered the matter, the more he discussed it with his old tutor, the more convinced he became that it was in his power to solve the difficulties of both socialism and labor, and thus to earn the gratitude, not only of his own people, but of the entire civilized world.

Of course, Prince Bismarck immediately realized the Utopian character of the scheme, saw its impracticability, and proceeded to condemn it with more than his ordinary irritability and brusquerie.  Finding, however, that the emperor was not to be argued out of the idea of holding a labor conference, he proceeded to ridicule it, and what was worse, to cause it to be scoffed at and treated with derision as the vaporings of an inexperienced and altogether too generous-minded youth, in German as well as foreign papers, which William knew derived their inspiration from the chancellor’s palace in the Wilhelmstrasse.

All this served to embitter the relations between the emperor and the prince.  The latter perceived that the kaiser was getting beyond his control, and was subject to other influences, while the emperor now commenced to appreciate the extent to which, he had been made subservient to the policy and to the wishes of his chancellor.  Meanwhile the necessity became apparent of taking some immediate step, one way or another, in connection with the prolongation of the exceptional measures against the socialists which were just expiring.  The chancellor was determined that they should be renewed, while the emperor felt that, with the international congress coming on, he would be handicapped in his role of arbitrator, and his good faith would justly be suspected by the socialists were he to consent to the continuance of repressive measures against them that were extra-legal, that is to say, beyond the laws of the land, and as such, strictly speaking, unconstitutional.

Finally, William discovering that Bismarck was negotiating with the various party leaders, notably with the late Dr. Windhorst, leader of the Catholic party in the Reichstag, with a view to the prolongation of the anti-socialist measures, made up his mind to dismiss him, and called for his resignation for having ventured to negotiate with the opposition leaders in the Reichstag, without his knowledge or consent, in order to obtain their support to a measure about which he had expressed his disapproval.  That was the real cause of Bismarck’s fall, despite all other stories current on the subject, and had not Empress Frederick engineered the meeting in the Westphalian capital between her son and his former tutor, it is possible that Prince Bismarck might have died in office.