Among the international agreements of the year was a commercial one between Germany and America.  Commercial relations between the two countries have never been quite satisfactory to either, and if there is no tariff war, occasions of tariff tension, with consequent disturbance of trade, constantly arise.  Germany’s European commercial treaties have secured her a sufficiency of raw material for her industry.  Her chief object now is not so much perhaps to facilitate imports of material from other countries as to find markets, in America as elsewhere, for her industry’s finished products.  Consequently she strongly dislikes the high tariff barriers of the United States, inaugurated by the Dingley tariff of 1897, and has in addition certain grievances against that country regarding customs administration in respect of appraisement, invoices, and the like.  Her commercial connexion with America dates from the treaty of “friendship and commerce” made by Frederick the Great, and having the most-favoured-nation treatment as its basis; a regular treaty of the same kind between Prussia and America was entered into in 1828; and since then commercial relations have been regulated provisionally by a series of short-term agreements which, however, America claims, do not confer on Germany unrestricted right to most-favoured-nation treatment.  By the agreement now in force, concluded this year (1910), America and Germany grant each other the benefit of their minimum duties.

Since the “November storm” the Emperor had made no reference to the doctrine of Divine Right, nor given any indication of a desire to exercise the “personal regiment” which is the natural corollary to it.  It has been seen that the doctrine, viewed from the English standpoint, is a species of mental malady to which Hohenzollern monarchs are hereditarily subject.  It recurs intermittently and particularly whenever a Hohenzollern monarch speaks in Koenigsberg, the Scone of Prussia, where Prussian Kings are crowned.  When at Koenigsberg this year the Emperor suffered from a return of the royal idee fixe.  “Here my grandfather,” he said,

“placed, by his own right, the crown of the Kings of Prussia on his head, once again laying stress upon the fact that it was conferred upon him by the Grace of God alone, not by Parliament, by meetings of the people, or by popular decisions; and that he considered himself the chosen instrument of Heaven and as such performed his duties as regent and as ruler.”

Speaking of himself on the occasion he said: 

“Considering myself as an Instrument of the Lord, without being misled by the views and opinions of the day, I go my way, which is devoted solely and alone to the prosperity and peaceful development of our Fatherland.”

The Emperor, by the way, on this occasion made what sounds like an indirect reference to the Suffragette craze.  “What shall our women,” he asked, after mentioning the pattern Queen of Prussia, Queen Louise,