What manner of a man, then, is William II.? An ambitious ruler of the stamp of Charles V., Louis XIV., or Napoleon—that Napoleon who is popular to-day in Berlin, where his portrait is exhibited in the shop windows more often than those of the Prussian kings, with the exception of “Old Fritz”? A great prince who has studied the lessons of his professors in history, and has striven to realize the ancient aspirations of his people? “The Hohenzollerns,” his teachers tell him, “after centuries of waiting, are destined to build up that great Empire of the West for which the heirs of Otto laid out the plans and the Hohenstaufen reared the scaffolding. Germany, united at last under the Hohenzollern sway, in vigour, in population, in intelligence, in power of production and expansion, superior to the decadent nations that surround her, must go forth resolutely to conquer Europe, and after that to dominate the world.” Such, I think, will be the flattering verdict that future German historians will pass on William II. In the world outside Germany, the Belgians, at any rate, will hold a different view. They will not subscribe to the accuracy of this idealized portrait, which omits those hitherto unsuspected features that the war has brought to their notice. In one who had motives for watching him during the last years before the catastrophe, the Emperor aroused a sense of perplexity and fear, like some momentous riddle that no man may read. To-day we cannot study his character without reference to the actions that have displayed it in a ghastly light. His dramatic figure is lit up for his victims by the flames of Louvain and other ill-starred cities, and in that same lurid glare they behold their country writhing beneath the blows that his insensate rage has dealt it.