white hair ornaments, grey gloves, white fans and pearls.

"Gentlemen wear the whole time a black band on the left sleeve. Civilians wear with the embroidered coat, during the first fourteen days, including January 12th, on occasions of Grand Gala, black buckles and swords with black sheathes. During the last eight days bright buckles; on occasions of 'Half Gala' gold or silver embroidered trousers of the color of the uniform and in the one as in the other case gold or silver embroidered hat with white plume; with the 'small' uniform, however, black trousers (or knee-breeches, black silk stockings, shoes with black bows and the 'three-cornered' hat with black plume). During the first fourteen days gentlemen wear black woolen vests and black gloves, in the last eight days black silk vests and grey gloves.

"Berlin, December 30, 1913.
"The Ober-Ceremonienmeister.
"Graf A. Eulenburg.

"By command of His Majesty the Emperor, mourning will be suspended for New Year's Day and the 17th and 18th of January."

So, it is apparent what a close corporation all the royal families make and the peoples are simply viewed as the personal property of the ruling princes. In his telegram which the German Kaiser wrote to President Wilson on August tenth, observe that all is personal. The Kaiser says, "I telegraphed to His Majesty the King, personally, but that if, etc., I would employ my troops elsewhere.... His Majesty answered that he thought my offer...." He speaks of the King of the Belgians "having refused my petition for a free passage." He refers to "my Ambassador in London."

This telegram shows, on the other hand, another thing,—the great ability of the Kaiser. Undoubtedly he knew why I was coming to see him—to present the offer of mediation of President Wilson—but from our conversation I do not think that he had even in his mind prepared the answer, which sets forth his position in entering the war.

He said, "Wait a moment, I shall write something for the President." Then taking the telegraph blanks lying on the table, he wrote rapidly and fluently. It was a message in a foreign language, and, whatever we may think of its content, at any rate it is clear, concise, consecutive and forceful.

The personal touch runs through that extraordinary series of telegrams in the famous "Willy-Nicky" correspondence between Kaiser Wilhelm and the last of the Romanoffs, discovered in Petrograd by Herman Bernstein. These reveal, moreover, the surpassing craft of the German Kaiser. He was the master schemer. Touting for German trade, always for his advantage, he twists the poor half-wit of the Winter Palace like a piece of straw.

Emperor William was not satisfied with a quiet life as patron of trade. As he studied the portraits of his ancestors, he felt that they gazed at him with reproachful eyes, demanded that he add, as did they, to the domains of the Hohenzollerns, that he return from war in triumph at the head of a victorious army with the keys of fallen cities borne before him in conquering march.

One-tenth of Frederick the Great's people fell, but to the poverty-stricken peasant woman of Prussia, lamenting her husband and dead sons, did it matter that the rich province of Silesia had been added to the Prussian Crown? What was it to that broken mother whether the Silesian peasants acknowledged the Prussian King or the Austrian Empress? Despots both. And what countless serfs fell in the wars between the King and the Empress! I once asked von Jagow when this war would end. He answered, "An old history of the Seven Years' War concludes, 'The King and the Empress were tired of war, so they made peace.' That is how this war will end." Will it? Will it end in a draw, to be resumed when some king feels the war fever on him? No, this war must end despots, and with them all wars!

It is all such a matter of personal whim. For instance before Bulgaria entered the war on the side of Germany, even the best informed Germans predicted that King Ferdinand would never join Germany because of an incident which occurred in the Royal Palace of Berlin. This is how it happened:

It is the custom for one monarch to make his pals in the King business officers of his army or navy. Thus the German Emperor was General Field Marshal and Proprietor of the 34th "William the first, German Emperor and King of Prussia" Infantry, and of the 7th "William the Second, German Emperor and King of Prussia" Hussars, in the Austro-Hungarian Army; Chief of the "King Frederick William III St. Petersburg Life Guards," the 85th "Viburg" Infantry and the 13th "Narva" Hussars, and the "Grodno" Hussars of the Guard, in the Russian Army; Field Marshal in British Army; Hon. Admiral of the British Fleet and Colonel-in-Chief 1st Dragoons; General in the Swedish Army and Flag Admiral of the Fleet; Hon. Admiral of the Norwegian and Danish Fleets; Admiral of the Russian Fleet; Hon. Captain-General in the Spanish Army and Hon. Colonel of the 11th "Naumancia" Spanish Dragoons; and Hon. Admiral of the Greek Fleet.

The King of Bulgaria was Chief of the 4th Thuringia Infantry Regiment No. 72, in the Prussian Army. As per custom, on a visit to Berlin he donned his uniform of the Thuringian Infantry. He had put on a little weight, and military unmentionables, be it known, are notoriously tight. So as he leaned far out of the Palace window to admire the passing troops, he presented a mark so tempting that the Emperor, in jovial mood, was impelled to administer a resounding spank on the sacred seat of the Czar of all the Balkans. Instead of taking the slap in the same jovial spirit in which it was given the Czar Ferdinand, a little jealous of the self-assumed title of Czar, became furiously angry—so angry that even the old diplomats of the Metternich school believed for a time that he never would forgive the whack and even might refuse to join Germany. But Czar Ferdinand, believing in the military power of Germany, cast his already war-worn people in the war against the Allies, much to the regret of many Bulgarian statesmen who, having been educated at Robert College, near Constantinople, a college founded and maintained by Americans, and having imbibed somewhat of the American spirit there, were not over-pleased to think of themselves arrayed against the United States of America.

But there is no monarch in all Europe who is more wily than Czar Ferdinand. At a great feast in Bulgaria at which Emperor William was present, Czar Ferdinand toasted the Emperor in Latin and alluded to him as "Miles Gloriosus"—which all present took to mean "glorious soldier"; but the exact Latin meaning of "gloriosus" is "glorious" in its first meaning and "boastful" in its second, a meaning well known in Berlin where, at the "Little Theatre," in a series of plays of all ages, the "Miles Gloriosus" of Plautus had just been presented—a boastful, conceited soldier, the "Miles Gloriosus," the chief character of the comedy.

Nothing illustrates more vividly the belief of the royal families of the Central Empires in their God-given right to rule the plain people than those few words of Maximilian written before his ill-fated expedition to Mexico. Speaking of the Palace at Caserta, near Naples, he wrote, "The monumental stairway is worthy of Majesty. What can be finer than to imagine the sovereign placed at its head, resplendent in the midst of these marble pillars,—to fancy this monarch, like a God, graciously permitting the approach of human beings. The crowd surges upward. The King vouchsafes a gracious glance, but from a very lofty elevation. All powerful, imperial, he makes one step towards