At the moment when the article appeared, in which it was publicly intimated that the crown prince’s malady was a just and well-merited punishment for his sins, the imperial patient, so sorely afflicted, whose life had been so blameless, was at death’s door, a fact over which the court chaplain openly rejoiced, proclaiming that “a brilliant future is about to open up before us.”

Since William has cut himself adrift from Pastor Stoecker, the strictness of his views with regard to the observance of Sunday, has undergone a change.  At any rate, he has modified them in so far as he himself is concerned, and while he is very regular in his attendance at church on Sunday morning, he no longer seems to consider it a sin to go out sailing, shooting or hunting on Sunday afternoons, or to attend theatrical performances or other kinds of entertainment in the evening.  Inasmuch as the Sunday Observance Laws have not been repealed, one can only take it for granted that he considers himself and his consort as being above the law of the land, and in no wise bound thereby.  Yet neither of their majesties has a legal right to any such immunity.  According to the terms of the Prussian constitution the emperor and empress are just as amenable to the laws that figure in the statute book, and equally required to obey them as any ordinary German citizen.  The only advantage that the emperor enjoys is that he possesses certain prerogatives in connection with the giving of evidence, and with the punishment of offences that are directed against his person and his honor.

In this obligation to submit to the laws of the land he differs from his grandmother Queen Victoria, and from his ally, Emperor Francis-Joseph, the tenure of whose thrones was originally based on what in olden times was known as the Divine right of kings.  Thus, in England, as in Austria, and even in Spain and Portugal, the mediaeval theory still prevails that “the king can do no wrong!” Queen Victoria, for instance, is not below the law like Emperor William, but above it.  No court has jurisdiction over her, and legally speaking there is no jurisdiction upon earth to try her in a civil or criminal way, much less to condemn her to punishment.

Of all the prerogatives enjoyed by Queen Victoria, the one, however, of which the kaiser is the most envious is her supremacy of the state Church of England.  His ambition is to acquire the same position with regard to the whole Lutheran Church as she enjoys over the Anglican denomination.  This dream, difficult of execution for reasons which I will proceed to explain, originated with his great-grandfather, King Frederick-William III., who first conceived the idea of a species of Lutheran Kaliphate, with its headquarters at Berlin, and its Mecca at Jerusalem.