Germany’s relations with Great Britain at the time of the accession were unclouded.  Mr. Gladstone had been defeated on his Home Rule proposals and Lord Salisbury was back in power.  A lull had occurred in British relations with the Transvaal.  All nations, including Germany, were beginning to turn their attention to the Orient with a view to the acquisition in Asia of “spheres of influence and spheres of interest,” but as yet English and German interests had not come anywhere into conflict.

The Emperor’s great internal foe and the object of his special enmity is the Social Democracy, and practically from the day of his accession he has waged war with it.  His attitude towards the Socialists requires no long description, since it logically results from his traditional conception of Prussian monarchy and from the revolutionary character of Social Democratic aims.  While a young man he paid little or no attention to the movement, and probably regarded it as the “passing phenomenon” he subsequently declared it to be.  In 1884 the number of Social Democratic voters was something over half a million, and the number of Social Democratic members returned to the Reichstag 25:  in 1890, two years after the accession, the figures were a million and a half and 35 respectively.

The Emperor’s denunciation of Social Democrats has always been unmeasured.  “A crew undeserving the name of Germans,” a “plague that must be extirpated,” “traitors,” “people without a country and enemies to religion,” “foes to the Empire and the country”—­such were a few of the expressions he then and during the next few years publicly applied to three millions of his subjects.  To-day, it may be added, the number of Social Democrats in Germany is well over four millions.

In 1889, in reply to a deputation of three coal miners’ representatives, the Emperor said: 

“As regards your demands, I will have them carefully investigated (a phrase, by the way, not unknown in England) by my Government, and let you know the result through the usual official channels.  Should, however, offences against public peace and order occur, should a connexion between your movement and Social Democratic circles be demonstrated, I would not be in a position to weigh your wishes with my royal goodwill, since for me every Social Democrat is the same thing as a foe to the Empire and the Fatherland.  Accordingly, if I see that Social Democratic tendencies mix with the movement and lead to unlawful opposition, I will intervene with all my powers—­and they are great.”

And a month later: 

“That the Radical agitation of the Social Democracy has turned so many heads and hearts is due to the fact that in schools, high and low, too little is taught about the cruel deeds of the French Revolution and too little about the heroic deeds of the War of Liberation, which was (with the help of English bayonets, be it parenthetically remarked) the salvation of the Fatherland.”

In 1892, to anticipate by a year or two, in reply to a guest who had observed that Social Democrats were not decreasing in numbers, the Emperor remarked: