This attitude of the ruler will be as incomprehensible to the democratic citizen as alchemy, but, in order to draw anything like true inferences or useful deductions, in order to understand the situation and to get a true likeness of the ruler, one must take this utterly unfamiliar and to us incomprehensible claim into consideration, and acknowledge its existence whether we admit the claim as justifiable or not. The relation of such a ruler to his people is like that of a Catholic bishop to his flock. The contract is not one made with hands, but is an inalienable right on the one hand, and an undisseverable tie upon the other. Bismarck wrote on this subject: "Fuer mich sind die Worte, 'von Gottes Gnaden,' welche christliche Herrscher ihrem Namen beifuegen, kein leerer Schall, sondern ich sehe darin das Bekenntniss, des Fuersten das Scepter was ihnen Gott verliehen hat, nur nach Gottes Willen auf Erden fuehren wollen." On several occasions the German Emperor has made it unmistakably clear that this is his view of the origin and sanctity of his responsibilities. "If we have been able to accomplish what has been accomplished, it is due above all things to the fact that our house possesses a tradition by virtue of which we consider that we have been appointed by God to preserve and direct, for their own welfare, the people over whom he has given us power." These words are from a speech made in 1897 at Bremen. In 1910, at Koenigsberg, he declares: "It was in this spot that my grandfather in his own right placed the royal crown of Prussia upon his head, insisting once again that it was bestowed upon him by the grace of God alone, and not by parliaments and meetings and decisions of the people. He thus regarded himself as the chosen instrument of heaven, and as such carried out his duties as a ruler and lord. I consider myself such an instrument of heaven, and shall go my way without regard to the views and opinions of the day." Prince Henry of Prussia, the popular, and deservedly popular, sailor brother of the Emperor, has signified his entire allegiance to this doctrine by saying that he was actuated by one single motive: "a desire to proclaim to the nations the gospel of your Majesty's sacred person, and to preach that gospel alike to those who will listen and to those who will not." This language has a strange and far-away sound to us. It is as though one should come into the market-place with the bannered pomp of Milton's prose upon his lips. The vicious would think it a trick, the idle would look upon it as a heavy form of joking, the intelligent would see in it a superstition, or a dream of knighthood that has faded into unrecognizable dimness. Some men, on the other hand, might wish that all rulers and governors whatsoever were equally touched with the sanctity of their obligations.