Although the Emperor was always very powerful in speech and gesture, still, during the war he was much less independent in his actions than is usually assumed, and, in my opinion, this is one of the principal reasons that gave rise to a mistaken understanding of all the Emperor’s administrative activities.  Far more than the public imagine he was a driven rather than a driving factor, and if the Entente to-day claims the right of being prosecutor and judge combined in order to bring the Emperor to his trial, it is unjust and an error, as, both preceding and during the war, the Emperor William never played the part attributed to him by the Entente.

The unfortunate man has gone through much, and more is, perhaps, in store for him.  He has been carried too high and cannot escape a terrible fall.  Fate seems to have chosen him to expiate a sin which, if it exists at all, is not so much his as that of his country and his times.  The Byzantine atmosphere in Germany was the ruin of Emperor William; it enveloped him and clung to him like a creeper to a tree; a vast crowd of flatterers and fortune-seekers who deserted him in the hour of trial.  The Emperor William was merely a particularly distinctive representative of his class.  All modern monarchs suffer from the disease; but it was more highly developed in the Emperor William and, therefore, more obvious than in others.  Accustomed from his youth to the subtle poison of flattery, at the head of one of the greatest and mightiest states in the world, possessing almost unlimited power, he succumbed to the fatal lot that awaits men who feel the earth recede from under their feet, and who begin to believe in their Divine semblance.

He is expiating a crime which was not of his making.  He can take with him in his solitude the consolation that his only desire was for the best.  And notwithstanding all that is said and written about William II. in these days, the beautiful words of the text may be applied to him:  “Peace on earth to men of goodwill."[4]

In his retirement from the world his good conscience will be his most precious possession.

Perhaps in the evening of his days William II. will acknowledge that there is neither happiness nor unhappiness in mortal life, but only a difference in the strength to endure one’s fate.

2

War was never in William II.’s programme.  I am not able to say where, in his own mind, he had fixed the limits he proposed for Germany and whether it was justifiable to reproach him with having gone too far in his ambition for the Fatherland.  He certainly never thought of a unified German world dominion; he was not so simple as to think he could achieve that without a war, but his plan undoubtedly was permanently to establish Germany among the first Powers of the world.  I know for certain that the Emperor’s ideal plan was to come to a world agreement with England and, in a certain sense, to divide the world with her.  In this projected