The historic quarrel between the Emperor and his Chancellor was not merely the inevitable clash between two dispositions fundamentally different, but between—­to adapt the expression of a modern poet—­“an age that was dying and one that was coming to birth.”  Old Prussia was giving place to New Germany.  The atmosphere of war had changed to an atmosphere of peace.  The standards of education and comfort were rising fast.  The old German idealism was being pushed aside by materialism and commercialism, and the thoughts of the nation were turning from problems of philosophy and art to problems of practical science and experiment.  Thought was to be followed by action.  Mankind, after conversing with the ancients for centuries, now began to converse with one another.  The desire for national expansion, if it could not be gratified by conquest, was to be satisfied by the spread of German influence, power, activity, and enterprise in all parts of the world.  Such a collision of the ages is tragedy on the largest scale, for nothing can be more tragic—­more inevitable or inexorable—­than the march of Progress.

The natures of the two men were, in important respects, fundamentally different.  Bismarck’s nature was prosaic, primitive, unscrupulous, domineering:  a type which in an English schoolboy would be described as a bully, with the modification that while the bully in an English school is always depicted as a coward at heart (a supposition, however, by no means always borne out in after-life), Bismarck had the courage of a bull-dog.  Moreover, Bismarck was a Conservative, a statesman of expediency.  The Emperor is a man of principle; and as expediency, in a world of change, is a note of Conservatism, so, in the same world, is principle the leit-motiv of Liberalism.  To call the Emperor a man of principle may appear to be at variance with general opinion as founded on exceptional occurrences, but these do not supply sufficient material for a fair judgment, and there are many acts of his reign which show him to be Liberal in disposition.

Not, it need hardly be said, Liberal in the English political sense.  Liberalism in England—­the two-party country—­usually means a strong desire to vote against a Conservative on the assumption that the Conservative is nearly always completely wrong and never completely right.  As will be seen later, there is no political Liberalism in the English sense in Germany.  The Emperor’s Liberalism shows itself in his sympathy with his people in their desire for improvement as a society of which he is the head, selected by God and only restricted by a constitutional compact solemnly sworn to by the contracting parties.  Proofs of this sympathy might be adduced—­his determination to carry through his grandfather’s social policy against Bismarck’s wish, however hostile he was and is to Social Democracy; his steadfast peace policy, however nearly he has brought his country to war; his encouragement of the arts among the lower classes, however limited his views on art may be; his friendly intercourse with people of all nationalities and occupations.