The Prussian Junkers are the lieges of the war-lord. They are all the more loyal to the throne as they are poor, and therefore dependent on the King for their very subsistence. There are few large estates in Prussia, and they yield but a meagre revenue. The relations of the Junkers to the Hohenzollerns are the relations of William the Conqueror to his companions-in-arms. The Junkers originally held their broad acres, their _Rittergut_, by military tenure. Some of their feudal privileges have gone, but they continue to be the leading political power in the State under the Kaiser’s Majesty. They are the pillars of the throne. They owe military service. To recall the words of the Sergeant-King, they are “_dem Regiment obligat_.” And they are rewarded for their military services by privileges innumerable. They are the controlling influence in the Landtag, which is a representative assembly only in name. They occupy the higher posts in the Civil Service and in the Diplomatic Service. In each district the Landrat is the supreme authority, the electioneering agent of the Government and the representative of the Prussian King. And the Junker caste have been as selfish, as rapacious, as their Hohenzollern overlords. Nothing could be more sordid than their attitude in the recent campaign for financial reform. They have shifted the burden of taxation upon the weaker shoulders of the peasant and artisan. They have compelled von Bülow to reverse the Liberal Free Trade policy of Caprivi, and to impose heavy corn duties, merely to increase their own rents. X.—PRUSSIA AS A DESPOTIC STATE. In a military State like Prussia, which is mainly organized for war, where war is the vital function, not only does the King hold his power by the Divine right of the sword, but even in times of peace all political power is concentrated into his hands: “_L’état c’est moi!_” In such a State a Parliamentary Government is an absurdity, and, as a matter of fact, there is no Parliamentary Government, neither in Prussia nor in the Empire. There is no responsible Cabinet. The Chancellor is accountable, not to the majority of the Reichstag, but to the Kaiser. The Germans imagine that because they have the fiction of universal suffrage they possess the most democratic Government in Europe. And an enthusiastic German triumphantly reminded me of the fact at a mass meeting which I recently held in San Francisco on behalf of the Allies. I reminded him that Bismarck himself has given us in his “Memoirs” the Machiavellic reasons which induced him to invent the fiction of universal suffrage. The man of blood and iron tells us that he only adopted universal suffrage as a temporary device to convert the German States to the Prussian policy, and as a means of influencing the people against the federal dynasties.