the _Marengo_ was nothing more than a simple desire for a sea trip;
France, going like Mohammed to the mountain, bore in her flanks nothing
larger than a mouse. Finally, that Peace never having been threatened by
the Loyal League of Peace, there could be no possible reason left to
France and Russia for wanting to defend it, etc., etc.

William II is working hard to control and direct the diplomacy of the
Triple Alliance. Nevertheless, all his scaffolding work is liable to
sudden collapse, overthrown by the most insignificant of events.
Regarding his speech to the recruits, the German Press has pluckily
voiced its condemnation by the public. It is impossible to deny that his
observations on that occasion were a perfect masterpiece of
self-glorification. This is what he said--

"You have just taken the oath of fidelity to myself. From this day
forward there exists for you one order and one order only, that of my
majesty. Henceforth you have only one enemy, mine, and should it be
necessary for me some day (which God forbid) to order you to shoot your
own parents, yes, to fire on your own brothers and sisters, fathers and
mothers, on that day remember your oath."

Those who wish to form an accurate idea of William's loquacity and
self-conceit should read a few passages, selected haphazard from "The
Voice of the Lord upon the waters," a sermon by His Majesty, the
Emperor-King, for use in polar voyages. There they will find a strange
hotch-potch of all sorts of ideas, religious, political and heathen, all
half digested. But the dominant note in the sermons preached by William
II lies in his tendency to diminish the Infinite, to hold it within the
measure of his own mind, to bring down God to his own stature. All his
comparisons tend to show God as an Emperor, built in the image in which