Evidently this big convulsion took William completely by surprise. Up to this time he had been deeply engrossed in the spectacular side of his position--the showy and laborious routine of an Emperor who is also a practical working soldier. Such thought as he had given to the great economic problems pressing for solution all about him, seems to have been of the most casual sort and cast wholly in the Bismarckian mould. What Bismarck’s views on this subject were and are, is well known. He believes that over-education has filled the labouring classes of Germany with unnatural and unreasonable discontent, which is sedulously played upon by depraved Socialist agitators, and that the only way to deal with the trouble is to imprison or banish as many of these latter as possible, and crush out the disaffection by physical force wherever it manifests itself. He decorates this position with varying sophistical frills and furbelows from time to time, but in its essence that is what he thinks. And up to May of 1889 that is apparently what William thought, too. The huge proportions of this sudden revolt of labour made William nervous, however, and in this excited state he was open to new impressions. The anti-Bismarck coalition saw their chance and swiftly utilized it. With all haste they summoned Dr. Hinzpeter from his home at Bielefeld, and persuaded William to confer with his old tutor upon this alarming industrial complication, with which it was clearly enough to be seen his other advisers did not know how to deal. No exact date is given for the interview which William had with Dr. Hinzpeter, but the day upon which it was held should be a memorable one in German history. For then dawned upon the mind of the young Kaiser that dream of Christian Socialism with the influence of which we must always thereafter count. It is true that the angered and dispossessed ex-Chancellor declares now that William never was morally affected by the painful aspects of the labour question, and that he took the side of the workmen solely because he thought it would pay politically. But men who know the Kaiser equally well, and who have the added advantage of speaking dispassionately, say that the new humanitarian views which Dr. Hinzpeter now unfolded to him took deep hold upon his imagination, and made a lasting mark upon his character. Even if the weight of evidence were not on its side, one would like to believe this rather than the cynical theory propounded from Friedrichsruh. William did not become a full-fledged economic philosopher all at once under this new influence.