Before completing the Emperor’s domestic chronicle of more recent years, a few lines may be devoted to the role in which he has last appeared before the public—­that of farmer.  On February 12, 1913, he attended a meeting of the German Agricultural Council in Berlin, and with only a few statistical notes to help him narrated in lively and amusing fashion his experiences as owner of a farm, the management of which he has been personally supervising since 1898.  The farm is part of the Cadinen Estate, bequeathed to him by an admirer and universally known for the majolica ware made out of the clay found on the property.  The Emperor was able to show that he had achieved remarkable success with his farm, and particularly with a fine species of bull, Bos indicus major, he maintained on it.  A year or two before, at a similar meeting, when speaking of the same breed of bull, he caused much hilarity among the military portion of his audience by jokingly remarking that it had “nothing to do with the General Staff.”  On the present occasion he also caused laughter by recounting how he had “fired,” to use an American expression exactly equivalent to the German word employed by the Emperor, a tenant who “wasn’t any use.”  The Emperor, however, would, as it turned out, have done better by not mentioning the incident, for the Supreme Court at Leipzig a few days subsequently quashed the Emperor’s order of ejectment on the tenant and condemned him to pay all the costs in the case.  The role of farmer, it may be added, is one which, had he been born a country gentleman like Bismarck, the Emperor would have filled with complete success.  But in what role would he not have done well?

Foreign politics everywhere for the last three or four years have been full of incident, outcry, and bloodshed.  The state of things, indeed, prevailing in the world for some time past is extraordinary.  A visitant from another planet would imagine that normal peace and abnormal war had changed places, and that civilized mankind now regard peace as an interlude of war, not war as an interlude of peace.  He would be wrong, of course, but the race in armament, which threatens to leave the nations taking part in it financially breathless and exhausted, might easily lead him astray.  On some of the situations with which these politics are concerned we may briefly touch.

For the last three or four years the dominant note in the music of what is called the European Concert, taking Europe for the moment to include Great Britain, has been the state of Anglo-German relations.  There have been times, as has been seen, when public feeling in both England and Germany was strongly antagonized, but all through the period there has been evident a desire on the part of both Governments to adopt a mutually conciliatory attitude, and if the war in the Balkans does not lead to a general international conflagration, which at present appears improbable, the two countries may arrive at a permanent understanding.