has on this occasion accentuated the disproportion between the framework
and the results obtained. He insisted upon it that the proceedings
should be as imposing as the refusal of the delegates' request was to be
humiliating. All the pomp and circumstance of State was displayed for
the occasion, with the result of producing a scene, carefully prepared in
advance, worthy of a Nero. The Emperor of Germany surrounded by his
military household, in the hall of his Knights of the Guard, receives the
complaints of the representatives of Alsace-Lorraine, who have come to
ask for a relaxation of the laws imposed on them by conquest. To them,
William II made answer: "The sooner the population of Alsace-Lorraine
becomes convinced that the ties which bind her to the German Empire will
never be broken, the sooner she proves more definitely that she is
resolved henceforward to display unswerving fidelity towards _me_ and
towards the Empire, the sooner will this hope of hers be realised."

Above the Imperial Palace, during this scene, the yellow flag of the
Emperors of Germany floated side by side with the purple banner of
Prussia.

Another picture--

The Emperor gives a banquet to the delegates of Alsace-Lorraine, after
having refused to hear their complaints. At the same table with them he
invites Herr Krupp to sit, in order to remind the people of the annexed
provinces of the cannons which defeated France and will defeat her again.
Here we have a reproduction of the Roman Empire in decay. The power of
the conqueror, imposed in all its pomp upon the vanquished, with the
cruelty of a bygone age.