The visit was made expressly an affair of State.  The Emperor was accompanied by the Empress, and the visit became a pageant and a demonstration—­a pageant in respect of the national honours paid to the imperial guests and a demonstration of national regard and respect for them as friends of England.  Nothing could have been simpler, or more tactful or more sincere than the utterances, private as well as public, of the Emperor throughout his stay.  His very first speech, the few words he addressed to the Mayor of Windsor, displayed all three qualities.  “It seems to me,” he said, “like a home-coming when I enter Windsor.  I am always pleased to be here.”  At the Guildhall subsequently, referring to the two nations, he used, and not for the first time, the phrase “Blood is thicker than water.”

At the Guildhall, on this occasion, the Emperor reminded his hearers that he was a freeman of the City of London, having been the recipient of that honour from the hands of Lord Mayor Sir Joseph Savory on his accession visit to London in 1891.  He then referred to the visit of the Lord Mayor, Sir William Treloar, to Berlin the year previous, and promised a similar hearty welcome to any deputation from the City of London to his capital.  “In this place sixteen years ago,” continued the Emperor,

“I said that all my efforts would be directed to the preservation of peace.  History will do me the justice of recognizing that I have unfalteringly pursued this aim.  The main support, however, and the foundation of the world’s peace is the maintenance of good relations between our two countries.  I will, in future also, do all I can to strengthen them, and the wishes of my people are at one with my own in this.”

The procession that followed upon the visit to the Guildhall made a special impression on the Emperor.  “I was so close to the people,” he said afterwards,

“who were assembled in hundreds of thousands, that I could look straight into their eyes, and from the expression on their faces I could see that their reception of the Empress and myself was no artificial welcome but an out-and-out sincere one.  That stirred us deeply and gave us great satisfaction.  The Empress and I will take back with us recollections of London and England we shall never forget.”

While at Windsor the Emperor received a deputation of sixteen members of Oxford University, headed by Lord Curzon, who came to present him with the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws voted him by the University while he was still on his way to England.  It was a picturesque scene:  the members of the University in their academic robes were surrounded by a brilliant company representing the intellect of the country; and the Emperor, with the doctor’s hood over his field-marshal’s uniform, was the cynosure of all eyes.

The Emperor’s reply to Lord Curzon’s address, highly complimentary to the University though it was, was perhaps chiefly remarkable for the expression of his expectations from the Rhodes’ Scholarship foundation.  “The gift of your great fellow-countryman, Cecil Rhodes,” he said,