His mother said: “Don’t for a moment imagine that my son ever does anything from any motive but vanity.” - Emil Ludwig

Only by the universal propaganda of lies were they ever goaded into hate—not for trade-rivalry nor race-antagonism, not material nor moral causes, made this Cabinet War a necessity in any one of the European States. The life-blood of ten millions of her sons was shed by Europe, not under any “tragic necessity,” nor through any “fatal concatenation” of circumstances; the sacrifice was extorted from her only by her wrangling statesman.

And so the Emperor-King, in his oath, had sworn only to his own actual authority to decide all vital national questions “to the best of his ability”—and on what other principle does any reasonable human being proceed? None the less he remained, whatever the consequences, inviolable, unindictable, or, as it was expressed in other German National Constitutions, “hallowed.” At the beginning of the twentieth century, in the Old and the New Worlds, there was—besides the Tsar and the Sultan—no one who possessed such authority as William the Second.

The Emperor wanted to attract the adherents of the new doctrines by protecting the status of the working-man; he addressed the as “Ihr” and “Du,” fancied himself in the part of father of his people, was anxious to distribute privileges without himself abjuring any—in short, he wanted “popular absolutism,” after the fashion of Frederick the Great. Only he forgot that a century had gone by since then.