“such conduct as in the last degree tactless, indiscreet, and entirely inopportune.  It is a thing unheard-of that occurrences relating to a sovereign reigning at the time should be published without his permission.”

Germans as a people are passionately fond of dancing, and though everybody knows that the people of Vienna bear away the palm in this respect, claim to be the best waltzers in the world.  The Emperor, accordingly, won great popularity among the dancers of his realm this year by lending a favourable ear to the sighing of the young ladies of the provincial town of Crefeld for a regiment which would provide them with a supply of dancing partners.  The Emperor took occasion to visit the town, and brought with him a regiment of the Guards from Duesseldorf to form part of the new garrison.  He was received by the city authorities, and was at the same time, doubtless, greeted from balcony and window by multitudes of fair-haired Crefeld maidens, who looked with delightful anticipations on the gallant soldiers, who were to relieve the tedium of their evenings, riding by.  “To-day,” the Emperor told the assembled city fathers, “I have kept my word to the town of Crefeld, and when I make a promise I keep it too (stormy applause).  I have brought the town its garrison and the young ladies their dancers.”  The “stormy applause” was again renewed—­amid, one may imagine, the enthusiastic waving of pocket-handkerchiefs from the windows and the balconies.

The salient feature of foreign politics just now was, naturally, the close on March 31st of the Conference of Algeciras.  Its results have been referred to in the chapter on Morocco, and mention need only be made here of the famous telegram regarding it sent by the Emperor on April 12th of this year (1906) to the Foreign Minister of Austria, Count Goluchowski.  “A capital example of good faith among allies!” he telegraphed to the Count, meaning Austria’s support of Germany at Algeciras.  “You showed yourself a brilliant second in the tourney, and can reckon on the like service from me on a similar occasion.”

Internal affairs, and particularly the parliamentary situation in Germany, had during the three or four years before that of the “November Storm” demanded a good deal of the Emperor’s attention.  The everlasting fight with the rebel angels of the Hohenzollern heaven, the Social Democracy, had been going on all through the reign.  Now the Emperor would fulminate against it, now his Chancellor, Prince von Buelow, would attack it with brilliant ability and sarcasm in Parliament.  Still the Social Democratic movement grew, still the Vorwaerts, the party organ, continued to rail at industrial capitalists and the large landowners alike, still Herr Lucifer-Bebel bitterly assailed every measure of the Government.  The fact seems to be that the people were getting restive under the imperial burdens the Emperor’s world-policy entailed.  The cost of living, partly