town that the Emperor spoke the familiar words, "Our future lies on the water"; in another that he declared "The trident should be in our hand"; in a third that he uttered the appeal, "We have bitter need of a strong German Fleet." Again, he has repeatedly extolled the Great Elector--"the one among my ancestors for whom I have the most enthusiasm, who has from my earliest youth shone before me as a bright example," who, "looking far ahead, carried on politics on a large scale, as they are carried on to-day." In his great speech at Bremen in 1905, the Emperor said: "When as a youth I stood before the model of Brommy's ship, I felt with burning indignation the outrage that was then done to our fleet and our flag"; and these words undoubtedly referred to the injudiciously-phrased note in which Palmerston threatened that vessels which undertook belligerent operations under the colours of that greater German Empire, which then was not and was never to be, would render themselves liable to be treated as "pirates." The present realities of sea-power had been early revealed to him when, as he told the officers on board a British flag-ship in the Mediterranean, he "was running about Portsmouth Dockyard as a boy"; and, as he said in a speech made during the visit of King Edward to Kiel in 1904, "the stupendous activity on the sea at the headquarters of the greatest navy in the world impressed itself indelibly on his youthful mind," and made him, "as Regent, endeavour to realize on a scale corresponding to the conditions of his country what he had seen as a young man in England."