And Berlin, his faithful
Berlin, is abandoned. It is said that at a gala dinner the other day the
Emperor uttered these words: "The Empire has been made by the army, and
not by a parliamentary majority." But it is also said that Bismarck
observed to the Conservative Committee at Kiel: "It is best not to touch
things that are quiet, best to do nothing to create uneasiness, when
there is no reason for making changes. There are certain people who seem
singularly upset by the craving to work for the benefit of humanity." It
requires no special knowledge to interpret this sentence as a thinly
veiled criticism of the character of William II.
May 12, 1891. [8]
There is an attitude frequently adopted by William II, that German
socialists are in the habit of describing, as "the whipping after the
cake." He has now had the socialist deputies arrested, and he is
introducing throughout the country a system of espionage and
intimidation, which is only balanced to a certain extent by his fondness
for sending abroad a class of reptiles who go about preaching, writing
and imparting to others the doctrines which he endeavours to strangle at
birth in his own country. In spite of his brief flirtation with
socialism (in which he indulged merely to copy the man whom he opposes in
everything and cordially detests), William II has now come to persecute
it. One of his amiable jokes is to try and lead people to believe that
the order which he has given, for the dispositions of his troops on the
frontier _en echelon_, has no other object but to prevent Belgian
strikers, from coming into Germany.
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