“You see nothing was made easy for me in my youth.  Even the matter of eating an apple was rendered as difficult for me as possible!”

The kaiser is followed wherever he goes by an extremely clever stenographer, Dr. Weiss, who was formerly official shorthand writer to the imperial parliament.  He now forms part of the emperor’s household, and accompanies his majesty on all his numerous travels.  It is the doctor’s duty to place on record and preserve all the pearls that drop from the imperial lips, or perhaps, to put it more correctly, to give the emperor and his advisers an opportunity of editing and revising his public utterances before they find their way into print.  Dr. Weiss has several assistants who help him in the transcription of his shorthand notes, and none of the emperor’s public speeches or casual remarks find their way into print nowadays except through Dr. Weiss.  Thanks to the tact of this precious secretary, there exists, very often, a considerable diversity between what the emperor says, and what he is represented as having said, and it is in consequence of this wise provision that the imperial speeches appear to have become so much more discreet, and at the same time less sensational, than was the case during the early part of his reign.

Quick-tempered, passionate, generous-hearted, and extremely impulsive, the emperor, often speaking on the spur of the moment, frequently said more than he intended to say, and thus laid himself open to both domestic and foreign criticism and abuse.  He has not yet outgrown this fault, although he has become much more cautious than formerly, and moreover, with Dr. Weiss at his elbow, and with the care that is observed by the authorities to let none of the imperial utterances reach the public in print, save through Dr. Weiss, after being duly edited by him, most of the former perils have been averted.  The emperor is very particular, indeed, about having Dr. Weiss by his side, and frequently at public functions himself directs the doctor where to stand and where to sit, so that he may not lose a word of what his imperial master says.

Like the aged pontiff at Rome, William manifests a great predilection for the telephone.  There are telephonic instruments in his library, in his workroom, and even in his bed-chamber, and quite a considerable portion of the day is spent talking over the wires to his ministers, government officials, relatives, courtiers or mere friends.  He seems to find the same pleasure in calling up the various government departments that he does in alarming the various garrisons at night time, being evidently under the impression that by so doing he keeps the officials strictly attentive to their duties, and convinced that if not the eye, at any rate the ear of the emperor is on the qui vive! Nor are the government offices safe from being rung up by his majesty over the wires even at night time.  For the past two or three years he has insisted that at the ministry of foreign affairs, at the ministry of the interior, and at the war and naval departments, at least one of the divisional chiefs and half a dozen clerks should be kept on duty all night long, in order to attend to any business or to communicate to him without delay anything that they may regard as needing his immediate attention.