It is time, however, to return to the personal doings of the Emperor. He is responsible for Germany's foreign policy, and his duties in connexion with it and with the navy must often have suggested to him the desirability of seeing with his own eyes something of the Orient, the new battlefield of the world's diplomacy, and possibly a new Eldorado for European merchants and engineers. His journey to the East, now undertaken, was, however, chiefly a religious one, though it had also something of a chivalric character, since much of every German's imagination is concerned with the Crusades, the Order of Knight Templars, and similar historical or legendary incidents and personalities in the early stages of the struggle between the Christian and the Saracen. The birthplace of Christ has special interest for a Hohenzollern who holds his kingship by divine grace, and in the Emperor's case because his father had made the journey to Jerusalem thirty years before. The Emperor, lastly, cannot but have been glad to escape, if only for a time, such harassing concerns as party politics, scribbling journalists, long-winded ministerial harangues, and Social Democrats. The journey of the Emperor and Empress to Palestine occupied about a month from the middle of October, 1898, to the middle of the following November, and while it was one of the most delightful and picturesque experiences of the Emperor, it entailed some unforeseen and not altogether agreeable consequences. It was very much criticized in Germany as an exhibition of a theatrical kind, of the "decorative in policy," as Bismarck used to say, who saw no utility in decoration, and evidently did not agree with Shakspeare that the "world is still deceived by ornament." It was objected that the Emperor should have stayed at home to look after imperial business, that such a journey must excite suspicion in England and France--in the former because England is an Oriental power, and in the latter because France is supposed to claim special protective rights over Christianity in the East.