It was then that his great career as a European statesman really began. The impression is all but universal that King Wilhelm throughout the eventful years which followed was but the figure-head of the ship at the helm of which stood Bismarck, strong, shrewd, subtle, cynical, and unscrupulous. This conception I believe to be utterly wrong. I hold Wilhelm to have been the virtual maker of the united Germany and the creator of the German Empire; and that the accomplishment of both those objects, the former leading up to the latter, was already quietly in his mind long before he mounted the throne. I consider him to have possessed the shrewdest insight into character. I believe him to have been quite unscrupulous, when once he had brought himself to cross the threshold of a line of action. I discern in him this curious, although not very rare, phase of character, that although resolutely bent on a purpose he was apt to be irresolute and even reluctant in bringing himself to consent to measures whereby that purpose was to be accomplished. He was that apparent contradiction in terms, a bold hesitator; he habitually needed, and knew that he needed, to have his hand apparently forced for the achievement of the end he was most bent upon. He knew full well that his aspirations could be fulfilled only at the bayonet point; and recognising the defects of the army, he had while still Regent set himself energetically to the task of making Prussia the greatest military power of Europe. He it was who had put into the hands of Prussian soldiers the weapon that won Königgrätz. With his clear eye for the right man he had found Moltke and placed the premier strategist of his day at the head of the General Staff. Roon he picked out as if by intuition from comparative obscurity, and assigned to him the work of preparing and carrying out that scheme of army reform which all continental Europe has copied.