"in saying that the task of the German people is a hard one.... I hope our peace will not be disturbed, and that the events that are now happening will open our eyes, steel our courage, and find us united, if it should be necessary for us to intervene in world-policy." The Emperor had, no doubt, specially in mind the birth of the Anglo-French Entente and the war between Russia and Japan, both events forming the dominant factors of the political situation at this time. The Russo-Japanese War arose primarily from the unwillingness of Russia to evacuate Manchuria after the Boxer troubles in China. The incidents of the war are still fresh in public memory. It need only be recalled here that Germany was neutral throughout the conflict, that both President Roosevelt and the Emperor offered their services as mediators in its course, and that on the capture of Port Arthur by Admiral Nogi, in January, 1905, the Emperor telegraphed his bestowal of the _Ordre pour le Mérile_ on General Stoessel, the Russian defender of Port Arthur, and on Admiral Nogi. In the troubled history of Anglo-German relations is to be recorded the presence, in June of this year, of King Edward VII at Kiel with a squadron of battleships to pay an official visit to his nephew. The two fleets, those sunny days, formed a splendid spectacle--the two mightiest police forces, the Emperor would probably agree in saying, the world could produce. In fact, the Emperor had some such thought in mind, for he addressed King Edward as follows:-- "Your Majesty has been welcomed by the thunder of the guns of the German fleet. It is the youngest navy in the world and an expression of the reviving sea-power of the new German Empire, founded by the late great Emperor, designed for the protection of the Empire's trade and territory, and intended, equally with the German army, for the preservation of peace." One or two other incidents of interest in the Emperor's life may close the record of this year. One of them was the arrival of the Italian composer, Leoncavallo, in Berlin, to hand the Emperor the text of the opera "Der Roland von Berlin," Leoncavallo had composed at the Emperor's express request. Roland was a "strong, valiant and pious" knight of Charlemagne's time--like the Emperor, let us say--who originally hailed from Brittany--that lone and lovely Cinderella of France--and afterwards, for some unexplained reason, came to be the type of municipal independence in Germany. During the summer the Emperor and the Empress made an excursion, when on the Saalburg, to the statues of the Roman Emperors Hadrian and Severus. Did the Emperor recall, one wonders, as he stood before the figure of Hadrian, that pagan monarch's address to his soul:-- "Animula vagula, blandula, Hospes, comesque corporis, Quae nunc abibis in loca, Pallidula, rigida, nudula, Nee, ut soles, dabis jocos?"