malicious sport, rather than to encourage the kind of public servants who
strive continually to increase their efficiency, so as to serve him
better. Instead of being simply good and ruling benevolently, he aspires
to be first a sort of pope, imposing upon his people a social state
composed of servility and compulsory comfort, and again a leader of
crusades, drawing his people after him to the conquest of the world.

Spiritual and material interests, military organisation, he mixes and
confuses them like everything else which occurs to his mind, and every
day he does something to destroy the results of that marvellous
continuity, which did more to establish the power of William I than the
victories of Sadowa and Sedan. Ever more and more infatuated with the
idea of military supremacy, he now pretends to be greatly concerned with
the idea of disarmament. And he, the avowed protector of socialists,
looks as if he were about to accept from Mr. Dryander, the protestant
presidency of that association of workmen, which is being organised for
the purpose of fighting socialism.

Wherever we look, it is always the same, false pretences, trickery,
lying, love of mischief-making and of persecution, innumerable and
unceasing proofs given by William that his sovereign soul, irretrievably
committed to restless agitation, will never know the higher and divine
joys of peace.



March 1, 1891. [3]

For some months past, my dear readers, I have predicted that William II
will not be satisfied without paying a visit to France. The visit of the