There is one piece of advice that William's friends should give
him--not to restore the sixty millions of Guelph money to the Duke of
Cumberland. This ultra-modern young Emperor will very soon have
greater need of the services of the reptile Press than even Bismarck
himself; for every one of his latest rescripts adds new public
difficulties to the number of those secret ones which the
ex-Chancellor, with his infinite capacity for intrigue, will hatch for
him.

Bismarck, of the biting wit, who accepts the title of Duke of
Lauenburg, because, as he says, "it will enable him to travel
incognito," sends forth from Friedrichsruhe winged words which sink
deep into the mind of the people. This phrase, for example, which sums
up the whole of William's policy: "The Emperor has selected his best
general to be Chancellor and made of his Chancellor a field marshal."
And Bismarck begs his readers to insert the adjectives, good and bad,
where they rightly belong.



April 28, 1890. [3]

Emperor William continues to increase the list of his excursions into
every field of mental activity. Intellectually divided between the
Middle Ages and the late nineteenth century, it would seem as if he
were trying to forget the infirmity of his one useless arm by assuming
a prominent rôle modelled on men of action. He tries to combine in his
person the effects of extreme modernism with those of the days of
Charlemagne. Because of his very impotence, his desire to grasp and