I have related in a previous chapter how William, while a boy, was snubbed by his parents, and treated with considerable strictness.  His father, like so many good-looking giants, utterly free from affectation and pose, believed that he saw in his eldest boy a tendency to posture, a forwardness of manner, and a disposition towards pride of rank, amounting to arrogance, which it was necessary, at all costs, to repress.  Prince William, therefore, was constantly receiving setbacks, often of a most humiliating character, from his parents, and I am sorry to say that this practice of regarding him as a presumptuous youth whom it was necessary to check, extended to other European courts, so that poor William can not be said to have had an altogether enjoyable time; and in this connection it is just as well to state that the Prince of Wales and his other English relatives, took their cue from his mother in their treatment of him, a circumstance which he has neither forgiven nor forgotten.  Indeed the notorious absence of cordiality between the Prince of Wales and his imperial nephew of Berlin originates with the snubs which the British heir apparent, in his capacity of uncle, felt it necessary to administer to William, when the latter was a lad, and even when he had reached manhood.

Yet it would be unfair to ascribe any undue blame in the matter to the parents of Emperor William.  The responsibility must rest rather with those people with whom Prince Bismarck, acting through the old emperor, surrounded the young prince.  The mission of these nominees of the chancellor was to counteract the influence of the then crown prince and crown princess over their eldest son, and this was achieved by setting the boy against his parents.  Every direction or command given by Frederick or by his consort to their son was made the subject of critical discussion by the personages with whom Bismarck had surrounded him, until the latter became convinced that the judgment of his parents was at fault in almost everything that could be imagined, and that all their views, political as well as social, were thoroughly out of keeping with Prussian traditions and German patriotism.

This in itself was bad enough:  but what made matters infinitely worse, was that whenever William was subjected to any reproof or discipline by either his father or mother, those composing his immediate entourage at once impressed upon the royal youth that he was the victim of the most gross and unpardonable injustice, that both his father and mother were inordinately jealous of his striking individuality, that the unmerited severity to which he was subjected was brought about by their consciousness that his intellect was superior to theirs, and that his ideas were too thoroughly Prussian to constitute anything but a serious danger to their English liberalism.  The effect of influences such as these upon a high-spirited and impulsive youth, at the time entirely devoid of experience or of knowledge of the world, may readily be conceived.  It naturally led to an increase of what his parents regarded as his presumptuousness and forwardness of manner, and consequently to a growth of their severity towards him.  He, on the other hand, became more and more embittered by the unduly harsh and rather unjust treatment to which he was being subjected by both his father and his mother.