Emperor William is not fond of the press, and has never taken any trouble to conceal his dislike for that branch of the literary profession.  It is true that he has been subjected to a good deal of abuse at its hands, and that he has been made the object of calumny sufficient to drive a man so hypersensitive to public comment into a lunatic asylum.  Many of the most intricate troubles and most annoying episodes of his life and his reign have been in a large measure due to the press, inasmuch as they were either originated or envenomed by the newspapers.  William is as nervous about what the papers will say as a young debutante on the stage.  Not only does he keep an anxious watch upon the utterances of all German editors, but he ordains a vigilant scrutiny of the articles printed in foreign countries from the pens of correspondents stationed in Berlin, who, if any unfriendly mention of his name is brought home to them, are ultimately driven out of the country.

One of the first acts of Emperor William’s reign was the expulsion from Berlin of a number of foreign journalists, whose criticisms and comments on his attitude towards his mother, as well as on his opposition to the political views of his dead father, had been distasteful to the imperial eye.  A year later he caused a new series of press laws to be presented to the Reichstag, which contained such arbitrary provisions for stamping out the remaining liberties of the press that even the Cologne Gazette denounced it as “putting a frightful weapon into the hands of the government for suppressing freedom of speech and silencing opposition.”  This measure did not pass, in spite of all the efforts of his majesty, and its rejection merely served to embitter the emperor still further against the press.

As far as the German press is concerned William manages to get even with it by insisting upon the strict execution of the laws concerning the crime of Lese majeste with a severity that savors of the middle ages rather than of modern times.  Indeed, while there are few prominent journalists in Germany who have not undergone imprisonment since he ascended the throne, for writing of him in a manner that he considered disrespectful, there are some newspapers that are literally obliged to employ distinguished members of their staff for no other purpose than doing time in jail, as the penalty of too free utterances of the sheet with which they are connected.

Of course, William has no such means of dealing with the foreign press, which being more fearless, thanks to its immunity, has naturally subjected him to worse treatment than that of Germany.  Occasionally though, he gets even with some of his foreign assailants, and the following story is told of the manner in which he dealt with a newspaper proprietor in New York, who after rendering his journal conspicuous above all others for its personal attacks on his majesty, had the audacity to write him a letter, asking him for a brief article from his, the kaiser’s, pen.