History, to be sure, may be read in many ways, but from one standpoint it is perfectly possible to regard the framing of the present Constitution and the building up of the present German Empire not as the last stage in the attempt to give freedom and self-government to the German people, but to guarantee and maintain the supremacy of Prussia. Whether or not this is a possible view, it is, in any case, one occasionally to be found implied in the speeches of the Emperor, and it came to open expression in the statement of William I that the empire was merely a "greater Prussia." So, too, when a few years ago Alsace-Lorraine proved itself recalcitrant to the wishes of its imperial master, he threatened that he would make of it a "Prussian province."[2] [2] On this occasion a Socialist orator declared in the Reichstag: "We salute the imperial words as the confession, full of weight and coming from a competent source, that annexation to Prussia is the heaviest punishment that one can threaten to impose upon a people for its resistance against Germany. It is a punishment like hard labor in the penitentiary, with loss of civil rights." It need, therefore, not appear as startling as would otherwise be the case if on occasions which to us would seem peculiarly appropriate (as, for instance, the famous Königsberg speech, August 25, 1910) the Emperor makes no mention whatever of the Constitution. The sources of his power and the sanction for his authority he finds not in this instrument but in the history of his ancestors. To understand the personality and the speeches of the Emperor it is, therefore, necessary to recall that he is also King of Prussia and that the foundation of his ancestors' rule was laid in the province of Brandenburg, of which they became some centuries ago the margraves and electors. In 1300 Prussia was a wilderness inhabited by savages who were ruthlessly massacred by the Teutonic knights. It was looked upon as lying outside the German Empire. Through the knights the country was converted to Christianity, and the reduced native population was largely augmented by immigration from other German states. Although the Emperor is not slow to accept traditions with regard to his house, he never mentions the old shoot in the genealogical tree of an elector which carries us back to one of the fugitives who fled from Troy with Æneas. For our purposes, it was not until 1273 that a count of Hohenzollern first came into prominence, when, after a fortunate marriage, he became burgrave of Nuremberg and prince of the Holy Roman Empire. With the exception of Frederick William II, they have been a thrifty race. A little more than a century later there appears in history that one of the Emperor's ancestors to whom he frequently refers as the founder of his house and that one who began to acquire for it divine right.