I have intentionally gone into detail in this matter in order to show the following: First, how a monarch can and must influence the development of his realm by personal participation; second, how, if he makes his selections quite independently of party reasons, he can place able men at the head of the various departments; third, how, by the honest co-operation of these men with the sovereign, whose complete confidence they enjoy, brilliant results can be achieved. Everything that we did together was aboveboard and honest; nothing mattered but the welfare and development of the fatherland, its strengthening and equipment for competition in the world market. As was natural, I had close and lasting relations in the regular course of events with the Ministry of Public Worship and Instruction. Herr von Gossler and Herr von Trott may surely be considered the most important and prominent occupants of this post. In this Ministry a co-worker almost without equal arose in the person of Ministry Director Althoff, a man of genius. I had been made acquainted with the dark side of the high-school system of education by my own school experiences. The predominantly philological character of the training led, in the whole educational system as well, to a certain one-sidedness. When I was at the Cassel High School in 1874-77 I had observed that, although there was great enthusiasm for 1870-71 and the new Empire among the boys, there was, nevertheless, a distinct lack of the right conception of the German idea, of the feeling "civis Germanus sum" ("I am a German citizen")--which I impressed later upon my people at the laying of the foundation-stone of the Saalburg. To create such sentiments and awaken them in the rising generation and to lay the foundations for them firmly in the young hearts was a task somewhat beyond the powers of the teaching staff, in view of the fossilized, antiquated philological curriculum. There was great neglect in the department of German history, which is exactly the study through which young hearts may be made to glow, through which the love of one's native country, its future and greatness, may be aroused. But little was taught of more recent history, covering the years since 1815. Young philologists were produced, but no German citizens qualified for practical co-operation toward building up the flourishing young Empire. In other words, no _youths who were consciously Germans_ were being turned out. In a small reading club composed of my classmates I often tried to inculcate the idea of the Greater Germany, in order to eliminate parochial and similar conceptions which hampered the German idea. Admiral Werner's _Book of the German Fleet_ was one of the few works by means of which the living feeling for the German Empire could be fanned into flame.