mud, the waiting and the rifle pit, the bombardment and the scream of shell are having their effect.

And so the world waits upon the convenience of the seasons, when the soil shall be made solid for sacrifice. Then, out of the equation of nerves and temperament, what event will come forth? Sate yourself with speculation. Prophesy as you like. One man's opinion is as good as another's, no doubt. Proclaim, if you wish, that the outcome is on the knees of the gods.

But the German soldier thinks that he knows-he knows that he knows. His blood, his life-what is that to him? "Lieb Vaterland, magst ruhig sein," he murmurs in trench or battery pit, and sleeps peacefully and is content.

III

THE GERMAN EMPEROR AND TWO OF HIS FIGHTING

CHIEFS*

F IT will be convenient for you to delay your departure, the Emperor will receive you this afternoon," politely said a young officer attached to the Imperial Foreign Office. Booted and spurred, clad in service uniform, with sword at side, the bearer of this message strode hurriedly into the restaurant at the railroad station, where most of the officers at the Grand Headquarters take their meals. We were at luncheon, and the train was in the station, its starting time within less than five minutes. By so narrow a margin did this good fortune arrive!

I had suggested to the Chancellor of the Empire, Von Bethmann-Hollweg, at the end of our conversation the evening before, that it would be a pleasant circumstance for me if I might meet the Emperor before leaving Germany. It was by the merest chance that the favorable result came so quickly, or at all; for the Emperor has not received any foreigner since the war began; he is at the front practically all of the time, and while, in Germany, all connected with the war are incessantly busy with systematic and methodical pur

* Written at Berne, Switzerland, February 4, 1915.

pose, yet the German Emperor himself is the hardest worked man in the whole Fatherland.

Endless conferences and consultations, all of them of the most serious moment, on a great variety of subjects, call upon him for immense and never-ceasing labor. Then, too, he is constantly in and out of headquarters, speeding now to this point and now to that, or going about the country long since occupied by the German army, and now governed by German administration.

Even the unsympathetic must admit that William II is at his task all the time. From one of these journeys, it appeared, the Emperor had just returned; and thus came the lucky opportunity of meeting this extraordinary personage, the most widely discussed, the most violently abused and most highly praised of living men throughout the world.

Ten minutes past two in the afternoon was the time when I was requested to go to the temporary offices of the Chancellor of the Empire. After some moments of conversation with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Von Jagow, whom I had seen for an hour that morning, the Emperor's aide accompanied me to the garden where the Emperor was walking with the Chancellor. At exactly fifteen minutes before three o'clock I was presented to His Majesty.

Nothing could have been more informal than this meeting, and no one is or could be more democratic in manner than was this so-called "war lord"—a title, by the way, which runs back into the legendary Teutonic history of the Germanic tribes in their ancient forests; and a title, therefore, which is thoroughly

misunderstood and grotesquely misrepresented by the non-German world of the present day.

Contrary to American opinion, there is nothing pompous, nothing even pretentious in the bearing of William II-certainly nothing of the kind appeared on this occasion. The Emperor's manner was the opposite of the ostentatious; it was plain, straight-forward and frank. One's first impression is that of a strong man who is also a pleasant, simple-mannered gentleman, with an agreeable personality, charged with that engaging quality called magnetism.

One's second impression, following so quickly upon the first that the two are almost one, is that of immense vigor, abounding physical vitality and searchlight mental alertness. With it all, you are instantly put at your ease, although indeed the psychological atmosphere is not that of apprehension. There is in the Emperor's demeanor none of that stiff reserve with which so many public men cloak their own fear of themselves, not a vestige of that stilted manner so frequently used as a substitute for dignity.

The Emperor wore the simple uniform of the field, and about his shoulders hung the long gray fur-lined cloak, pictured so often in his photographs. His cap was the familiar headgear of the German officer. The Imperial Chancellor was clad in khaki-colored uniform, with boots and cap. There was a notable absence of decorations-so much so that, although one or two may have been worn, they did not impress themselves upon the mind. I was dressed exactly as I was when visiting the trenches and batteries, whence I had just come,

For two hours the conversation continued. I mention the length of time only because of the perfect opportunity it gave to observe the German Emperor and because so long a walk and conversation, after a hard forenoon's work, was something of a test of his physical endurance.

We walked during the whole of this time in the inclosed garden which is a part of the villa occupied by the Emperor in the French town where the Grand Headquarters were then located, a town, by the way, within half an hour's automobile ride from Sedan. The pathway of gravel was a long oval. Here and there clumps of trees beautified the grounds. A high wall, vine-covered, protected the garden in the rear. It was a gray day, the sky blanketed with leaden clouds; and the atmosphere was chill and damp.

His Majesty was within a little more than two weeks of his fifty-seventh birthday. He did not look older than his age suggests. The mustache was gray and the hair almost white; the gray-blue eye was clear, its expression intense and full of nervous force. I had been credibly informed that it is a mannerism of the Emperor to look at you piercingly for a space before speaking, but nothing of the kind occurred. The eye does have a penetrating quality; but if this experience was a fair test, the staring stories are untrue.

The complexion was pale with a faint tinge of color; the lips healthfully red. Under the eyes were wrinkles, but not more nor different than one sees on the faces of most active men of the Emperor's age. The features were not full, as shown by portraits of a year ago; still less were they haggard, as they appear in photo