How far the Emperor has helped to realize his own naval ambitions, and how far his efforts have actually told against them, it is very difficult to determine with anything like exactitude. His agitation for a bigger fleet has been open and unwearying, and outside Germany the idea is very prevalent that he not only contrived the naval policy of the Empire, but also, almost single-handed, generated the degree of popular support without which it could not have been carried out. This idea will be seen to be erroneous. The Emperor's influence upon his own people is very greatly overrated in other countries, and even the crisis of 1908, in which the storm of discontent which had long been gathering burst with full force upon his head, does not seem to have been properly understood outside Germany. On that occasion, the Imperial Parliament listened without a protest, without a murmur, as a Liberal deputy, slowly, deliberately, and with dramatic emphasis, spoke the following words: "In the German Reichstag not a single member has come forward to defend the actions of the German Emperor." The incident was without a parallel in the history of parliaments. Even the Conservative party, which has always gloried in being the chief prop of the throne, passed and published a resolution expressing the wish that the Emperor should "in future exercise a greater reserve in his utterances," and declaring that "arrangements must be made to prevent with certainty a recurrence of such improper proceedings." It may be remarked, in passing, that this blow fell upon William II. because he had confessed to having had Anglophile sentiments, and to having performed friendly services to Great Britain, at a time when the general feeling of the German people was one of hostility to this country. Nor was it without significance that when, after holding aloof from public affairs for several weeks, he at last emerged from the solitude of his palace at Potsdam, it was in England that he sought the recuperation and rest of which he stood in need. The dismissal of Bismarck and the subsequent attempts of the Emperor to depreciate the life-work of the man to whom he owed the Imperial crown, were, of course, the principal causes of the spirit of opposition which flared up with such startling suddenness in 1908. The popularity of William I. was in no small measure due to his absolute trust and confidence in his Chancellor, and the abrupt ejection of this incomparable statesman from his office will never be forgotten or forgiven till the generation of his contemporaries has passed away.