It is harder to inherit a kingdom than people think, and I say this without irony. William II was not human like his grandfather, who cried out when he saw the sacrifice of the cuirassiers of Reisdroffen: "Ah, my brave men!" William II possessed nothing of his father, who earned the name of Frederick the Noble, and who died of two maladies, that of his throat and that of his feverish impatience to reign. William II was charming as a boy. As a child he was an amiable playfellow. We have plundered the strawberry beds of Laeken together--a sacrilege which was pardoned solely on his account. I have followed his career as far as it was possible. I believed him to be great. I have heard much of his power not only from his own people, but from all people. He had a wonderful part to play. He did not know how to play it; he could not; he lacked the means to do so, and perhaps, first of all, a clever and good wife. He had no depth of soul. A different wife might perhaps have supplied him with this quality. Francis Joseph at the beginning of his active career as an Emperor was almost brilliant; he certainly appeared distinguished. Thirty years after, his face assumed an expression of vulgarity of which his first portraits gave no forecast, although at a distance he still gave the impression of being "somebody." But the high _morale_ of the Empress was somewhat reflected in him. Less blessed in a wife, the longer William II has lived the worse his looks, his speech and his bearing have become. Two men--the late King Edward VII and my father, the King of the Belgians--took his exact measure and augured nothing good for his future. The intimate opinion of him expressed by my father has often recurred to me, but this would entail a separate chapter and it would lead us far. I will confine myself to stating that the King had always foreseen that Germany, intoxicated with the warlike perorations of William II, who was a preacher of the old Prussian regime, would end by throwing herself upon Belgium, upon France and upon the whole world. The defences of the Meuse were a convincing indication of the King's forethought. But we shall never know all that the King said, what he did, and what he desired to do in this matter. Unfortunately certain parties and certain influential men in Belgium wrongly countered his plans instead of acting upon them. The country has suffered cruelly for this mistake.