November 27, 1890. [16]

How can one avoid taking an interest in William II of Hohenzollern? He
is one of those people who, by every means and in every way, insist on
being noticed. This up-to-date Emperor is obsessed by the idea of
making profit, for purposes of advertisement, out of every sensation;
he loves to upset calculations and produce every kind of astonishment.
He believes that he has not fulfilled his part, until he has made a
number of people lift their arms to heaven at least once a day and
exclaim: "William is marvellous!" He wants to hear this cry arise from
the humblest and the highest, from the miner's gallery and the palace
of his "august confederates," from the workman's cottage and the homes
of the middle-class, from the officers' club, from church and chapel,
from the Parliament of the Empire and the House of Peers.

Being _blasé_ himself, it pleases him to tickle public opinion with
spicy fare; his lack of mental balance compels him to these endless and
senseless choppings and changes, to all these schemes projected,
proclaimed and cast aside.

The former Court of his grandfather is already in ruins, the work of
Bismarck crumbling in the dust; in less than no time he has reduced the
old aristocratic and feudal Prussian monarchy to the purest kind of
democratic Caesarism.

Perched above every political party in Germany, William the Young wants
to be the one and only ruler and judge of all. Among themselves let
them differ as and when they will, it being always understood that all
these separate opinions must equally be sacrificed to the Emperor.