As William is a soldier in manners and habits, so his conceptions of government and of domestic statecraft are largely those which might be expected in a chief of staff. He addresses his people always as their commander-in-chief. The starting-point of his resolve to get rid of Bismarck and bring in new men like Miquel and Caprivi, was his discovery that the Chancellor and the various political parties and factions which he alternately bullied and cajoled were really so many impediments standing between him and his subjects. The Hohenzollern desired to speak directly to the people, as a general to his army, and he has swept aside whatever stood in the way. Such a posture does not, at first sight, seem to promise much for progress and enlightened development, but it must be remembered that universal service in the army has had the effect of familiarizing all other Germans with this same point of view, so that really sovereign and subjects get on much better together than in many countries nominally more free. The difficulties of government in Germany are almost wholly social and economic. The Prussian artizan, perforce, spends seven years at school and three years in the army before he seriously takes up his trade and sets to working for himself. He marries early and has a swarm of children, and the necessity of toiling to support all these in an overcrowded and underpaid labour market grinds upon his temper. He has, to begin with, a racial tendency to think highly of himself and to criticize other people; he is afforded only too much justification for his rooted dislike of aristocrats, employers, and rich people generally, who in Germany are much less generous and considerate than in some other countries. Thus he is peculiarly open to the arguments and allurements of the social democratic propaganda. The Kaiser’s idea is to meet and counteract this by appealing to the workman’s military recollections and pride. It is difficult for outsiders to realize the potency of this appeal. Americans and Englishmen see the scores of thousands of young Germans who expatriate themselves to escape military service, and assume, therefore, that it must be a hateful thing. To those who look forward to it this may be true. But to the poor German artizan who looks backward upon it this term of service in the army is apt to seem the pleasantest period of his life. By comparison with the hardships of his later independent struggle for existence, he comes to regard this time when he was fed and clothed and instructed and lodged, and wore a uniform, with affectionate regret.