On the occasion of this memorable day, I beg to send you my best wishes. May God grant you perfect health and happiness. Be assured that I always shall remember the excellent relations which have joined us during so many years, and accept the assurance of the highest esteem and respect of your most affectionate BULOW. 7 Nov. 1902. CHAPTER XLIV MY RECOLLECTIONS OF WILLIAM II--1879-1903 At various times since my leaving the Berlin Embassy various friends have said to me, "Why not give us something definite regarding the German Emperor?" And on my pleading sundry difficulties and objections, some of my advisers have recalled many excellent precedents, both American and foreign, and others have cited the dictum, "The man I don't like is the man I don't know." The latter argument has some force with me. Much ill feeling between the United States and Germany has had its root in misunderstandings; and, as one of the things nearest my heart since my student days has been a closer moral and intellectual relation between the two countries, there is, perhaps, a reason for throwing into these misunderstandings some light from my own experience. My first recollections of the present Emperor date from the beginning of my stay as minister at Berlin, in 1879. The official presentations to the Emperor and Empress of that period having been made, there came in regular order those to the crown prince and princess, and on my way to them there fell into my hands a newspaper account of the unveiling of the monument to the eminent painter Cornelius, at Dusseldorf, the main personage in the ceremony being the young Prince William, then a student at Bonn. His speech was given at some length, and it impressed me. There was a certain reality of conviction and aspiration in it which seemed to me so radically different from the perfunctory utterances usual on such occasions that, at the close of the official interview with his father and mother, I alluded to it. Their response touched me. There came at once a kindly smile upon the father's face, and a glad sparkle into the mother's eyes: pleasing was it to hear her, while showing satisfaction and pride, speak of her anxiety before the good news came, and of the embarrassments in the way of her son at his first public address on an occasion of such importance; no less pleasing was it to note the father's happy acquiescence: there was in it all a revelation of simple home feeling and of wholesome home ties which clearly indicated something different from the family relations in sundry royal houses depicted by court chroniclers.