In an inner room in the great palace the elder son of the dead Kaiser, all at once become William II, German Emperor, King in Prussia, eighteen times a Duke, twice a Grand Duke, ten times a Count, fifteen times a Seigneur, and three times a Margrave--this young man, with fifty-four titles thus suddenly plumped down upon him, * seated himself to write proclamations to his Army and his Navy. * With the possible exception of the Emperor of Austria, William is the most betitled man in Europe. Beside being German Emperor and King of Prussia, he is Margrave of Brandenburg, and the two Lausitzes; Grand Duke of Lower Rhineland and Posen; Duke of Silesia, Glatz, Saxony, Westphalia, Engern, Pomerania, Luneburg, Holstein-Schleswig, Magdeburg, Bremen, Geldern, Cleve, Juliers and Berg, Crossen, Lauenburg, Mecklenburg, of the Wends and of the Cassubes; Landgrave of Hesse and Thuringia; Prince of Orange; Count-Prince of Henneburg; Count of the Mark, of Ravensberg, of Hohenstein, of Lingen and Tecklenburg, of Mansfeld, Sigmaringen, Veringen, and of Hohenzollern; Burgrave of Nuremberg; Seigneur of Frankfurt, Rügen, East Friesland, Paderborn, Pyrmont, Halber-stadt, Münster, Minden, Osnabrück, Hildesheim, Verden, Kammin, Fulda, Nassau and Moers. CHAPTER VI.--UNDER THE SWAY OF THE BISMARCKS During the three days between the death and burial of Frederic the world saw and heard nothing of his successor save these two proclamations to the Army and Navy. This in itself was sufficiently strange. It was like a slap in the face of nineteenth-century civilization that this young man, upon whom the vast task of ruling an empire rich in historical memories of peaceful progress had devolved, should take such a barbaric view of his position. In this country which gave birth to the art of printing, this Germany wherein Dürer and Cranach worked and Luther changed the moral history of mankind and Lessing cleared the way for that noble band of poets of whom Goethe stands first and Wagner is not last, it seemed nothing less than monstrous that a youth called to be Emperor should see only columns of troops and iron-clads. The purport of these proclamations, shot forth from the printing press while the news of Frederic’s death was still in the air, fitted well the precipitancy of their appearance. William delivered a long eulogy upon his grandfather, made only a passing allusion to his father, recited the warlike achievements and character of his remoter ancestors, and closed by saying: “Thus we belong to each other, I and the army; thus we were born for one another; and firmly and inseparably will we hold together, whether it is God’s will to give us peace or storm.”