two hours, giving particular attention, with the aid of maps and plans, to the battle of the Yalu between the fleets of China and Japan.  He founded the Technical Shipbuilding Society, and took, and takes, an animated part in its proceedings, suggesting positions for the guns, the disposition of armour, the dimensions of submarines, and a hundred other details.  In 1908 he delivered an after-dinner lecture at the “Villa Achilleion” in Corfu on Nelson and the battle of Trafalgar, based on the writings of Captain Mark Kerr of the Implacable, at which the situations of the French, English, and Spanish fleets were sketched by the imperial hand.  To his admiration for the writings of Captain Mahan his persistence in enlarging the fleet is said largely to be due.  He is, of course, assisted by a host of able experts, among whom Admiral von Tirpitz—­the ablest German since Bismarck, many Germans say—­is the most distinguished; but as he is his own Foreign Minister and own Commander-in-Chief, he is, in the fullest sense, his own First Lord of the Admiralty.

The Emperor closed one of his naval lectures with an anecdote which the papers reported next day as being received with “stormy amusement.”  It was about the metacentrum, the centre of gravity in ship construction.  The Emperor told of his having asked an old sea lieutenant to explain to him the metacentrum.  “I received the answer,” said the Emperor, “that he did not know very exactly himself—­it was a secret.  ‘All I can say is,’ the old seaman went on, ’that if the metacentrum was in the topmast, the ship would over-turn.’” The success of a jest, one is told, lies in the ear of the hearer.  Possibly something of the “stormy amusement” may have been called forth by the reflection that the imperial metacentrum had on occasion got misplaced.

In addition to the natural and accidental predispositions of the Emperor, certain general considerations, which imposed themselves irresistibly on all men’s attention as the century drew to its close, impelled him to more energetic action.  A student of the history of other countries as well as his own, and a watchful observer of the tendencies of the time, he felt that the young Empire was incomplete as long as it was without a navy corresponding in size and power to its army, the organization of which had been completed.  With its army alone he regarded the Empire as a colossus, no doubt, but a colossus standing on one leg, and was convinced that if the Empire was to be a success it must have a navy at least able to withstand attack by any of his continental neighbours and potential enemies.

On ascending the throne the Emperor was naturally most occupied with the internal situation of his new inheritance, and spent a good deal of his time railing at Social Democracy and the press, explaining the nature of his Heaven-appointed kingship, and rousing his somewhat lethargic people to a sense of their power and possibilities; but he found a moment in 1891 to write under a photograph he gave the retiring Postmaster-General Stephan: