This young Emperor piles falsehood upon falsehood. If he permits any relaxation of the passport regulations, you may be perfectly certain that he will give orders that the _permis de sejour_ are to be more severely restricted than before. Once a passport is issued, it is of some value; but the _permis de sejour_ is a weapon in the hands of the lower ranks of German officialdom, which they use with Pomeranian cruelty. Every German bureaucrat in Alsace-Lorraine aims at preventing Frenchmen from residing there, at getting them out of the country; and nothing earns them greater favour in the eyes of their chiefs. Therefore, if this "young Emperor" is to be asked to grant anything, let it be a relaxation of the _permis de sejour_. To be allowed to _travel_ amongst the brothers from whom we are separated, can only serve to aggravate the grief we feel at not being allowed to _live_ amongst them. William's socialism is all of the same brand. His first display of affection for the tyrant lower down was due to the fact that he used him to overthrow a tyrant higher up: it was the socialist voter who broke the power of Bismarck. When we see William embarking upon so many schemes of social reform all at once, we may be sure that he has no serious intention of carrying out any one of them. After having made all sorts of lavish promises to the industrial workers, he is now busy giving undertakings to make the welfare of the peasantry his special care! In his speech to the Reichstag there is no mention even of the one definite benefit that the workers had a right to expect--namely, a reduction of the hours of labour; but the threat of shooting "them in the back" reappears in a new guise. William II warns the working classes of "the dangers which they will incur in the event of their doing anything to disturb the order of government." "My august confederates and I," adds the Emperor, "are determined to defend this order with unshakable energy." Delicious to my way of thinking, this expression "my august confederates." Is there not something astounding about the use of the possessive pronoun in connection with the word "august," implying sovereignty? One wonders what part can they have to play, these confederates, led and dominated by a personality as jealous and self-centred as this "young Emperor." There is only one thing about which William II really concerns himself, over and above his blind passion for increasing the forces of Germany, and that is, other people's morals--the morals of working men or officers. The devil has always had his days for playing the monk. May 20, 1890. [5]