At midday, two hours before the session of the Reichstag in its own chamber, Parliament was "opened" by the Kaiser personally in the celebrated White Hall of the Royal Castle. I had applied for admission after the few available press tickets were already exhausted, but it was not difficult for me to visualize the scene. I had been in the White Hall on several memorable occasions in the past--during the visit of King Edward VII in February, 1909, at a brilliant State banquet and at the ball which followed; at the wedding of the Emperor’s daughter, "the sunshine of my House," Princess Victoria Luise, and Duke Ernest August of Brunswick, in May, 1913; and a month later during the Silver Jubilee celebration of the Kaiser’s reign, when our own Mr. Carnegie showered plaudits on the Prince of the world’s peace. Tower, of _The World_ and _Daily News_, was lucky enough to secure a ticket to the Castle ceremonial, and he was bubbling over with excitement at having been privileged to participate in so memorable a function. My old friend, Günther Thomas, late of the _Newyorker-Staatszeitung_, now joyous in the prospect of joining the German Press Bureau’s war staff, came back from the Castle almost pitying me for not having been there. "Wile, I tell you," I can hear him saying now, "it was beautiful, simply beautiful! You missed it! It was enough to make one cry!" Thomas lived in New York seventeen years, but he returned to Germany a more devout Prussian than ever, as a man ought to be whose father fell gloriously at Königgrätz. The description furnished by my English and Prussian colleagues evidently did not exaggerate the splendor and impressiveness of the scene at the White Hall. The Kaiser, in field-general’s gray, entered, escorting the Empress. He was solemn, but not anxious-looking. Around the marble-pillared chamber, where only fifteen months before I had seen the Czar and George V of England tripping the minuet with German princesses as the Kaiser’s honored guests, were grouped the first men of the Empire. In the places of distinction, closest to the canopied throne, each according to his Court rank, stood the Imperial Chancellor, General von Moltke, Grand-Admiral von Tirpitz and a score of other eminent officers of the civil, naval and military governments. Among the foreign ambassadors only the representatives of Russia and France were missing from their old-time places. Mr. Gerard, modest and retiring as always, amid the glitter of gold lace and brass buttons flashing on all sides, cut a more than ever self-effacing figure in his diplomatic uniform--the plain evening dress of an American gentleman.