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With his future subjects Prince William was brought into close relations only in a very limited way. No one, save perhaps Bismarck, seems to have known or suspected his true character and aims. This was natural enough, since it is not until a man comes to occupy some influential or prominent position that the public begins to take an interest in him. His father would be Emperor before him, and fate might have it that he himself would not live to come to the throne. Royal highnesses are not uncommon in a country with such a feudal history and so many courts as Germany. The young Prince, moreover, was never, to use a phrase of to-day, in the limelight. He was never involved in a notorious scandal. He had not, as his eldest son, the present Crown Prince, has, published a book. He was more or less absorbed in the army, the early grave of so many dawning talents. And there was no newspaper press devoted to chronicling the doings and sayings of the fashionable world of his time. His natural abilities would doubtless have secured him reputation and success in any sphere of life, but, as he himself would probably be the first to admit, much of his fame, and even much of his merit, is due to the splendid opportunities afforded him by his birth and position.

At the same time it is obvious that if his people at this period had not much opportunity of studying the young Prince, he had been studying them and their requirements as these latter appeared to him. He had evidently thought much on Germany's conditions and prospects before he came to the throne, and was Empire-building in imagination long before he became Emperor. It is not hard to guess the drift of his meditations. The success of the Empire depended on the success of Prussia, and the success of Prussia, ringed in by possibly hostile Powers, on union under a Prussian King whom Germans should swear fealty to and regard as a Heaven-granted leader. From the history of Prussia he drew the conclusion that force, physical force, well organized and equipped, must be the basis of Germany's security. Physical force had made Brandenburg into Prussia, and Prussia into the still nascent modern German Empire. He knew that France was only waiting for the day to come when she would be powerful enough to recover her lost provinces. Russia was friendly, but there was no certainty she would always be so. Austria was an ally, but many people in Austria had not forgotten Sadowa, and in any case her military and naval forces were far from being efficient. An irresistible army, and a national spirit that would keep it so, were consequently Germany's first essentials.

Simultaneously a new fact of vital importance for Germany's prosperity presented itself for consideration—the growth of world-policy in trade, the expansion of commerce through the development caused by new conditions of transport and intercommunication in which other nations were already engaged. The Prince saw his country's merchants beginning to spread over the earth, and believing in the doctrine that trade follows the flag, he felt that the flag, with the power and protection it affords, must be supplied. For this it appeared to him that a navy was as indispensable as was an efficient army for Germany's internal security. All other great countries had fine navies, while to Germany this complement of Empire was practically wanting. Accordingly he now took up the study of naval science and naval construction.

There was an occasion, however, at this time when the young Prince attracted general attention, if only for a few days. It was when as colonel of the Body Guard Hussars, he ordered his officers to withdraw from a Berlin club in which hazard and high play had ruined some of the younger and less wealthy members. The committee of the club used their influence to cause Emperor William to make the new commander cancel his order. The Emperor sent for his grandson and requested its withdrawal.

"Majesty," said the young commander, "permit me a question—am I still commander of the regiment?"

"Of course—"

"Well, then, will your Majesty allow me to maintain the order—or else accept my resignation?"

"Oh," said the Emperor, who was in reality pleased with the young disciplinarian, "there can be no talk of such a thing. I could not find so good a commanding officer again in a hurry."

When the club committee's ambassadors came to the Emperor to learn the result of his intervention, his answer was, "Very sorry, gentlemen; I did my best, but the colonel refuses."

The political situation as regards France was just now highly precarious. General Boulanger, whom Gambetta once described as "one of the four best officers in France," had become Minister of War in the de Freycinet Cabinet of 1886. Relying on a supposed superiority of the French army, he prepared for a war of revenge against Germany and aimed, with the help of Deroulède and Rochfort, at suppressing the parliamentary régime and establishing himself as dictator. His plans were answered in Germany by the acceptance of Bismarck's Septennat proposals for increasing the army and fixing its budget for seven years in advance. The war feeling in France diminished, and though it revived for a time owing to the arrest of the French frontier police commissary Schnaebele, it finally died out on that officer's release at the particular request of the Czar to Emperor William. Boulanger's subsequent history only concerns France. He was sent to a provincial command, but returned to Paris, where he was joyously received and elected to Parliament by a large majority. He might, it is believed, a year or two later, on being elected by the department of the Seine, with Paris at his back, have made a successful coup d'état on the night of his triumphant election, but his courage at the last moment failed, and on learning that he was about to be arrested he fled to Brussels, where he committed suicide on the grave of his mistress.

The time, however, was approaching, the most interesting, and as the succession of events have shown, the most momentous for the Empire since 1870, when Prince William's accession was obviously at hand. During the year 1887 and the early part of 1888 the attention of the world was fixed, first curiously, then anxiously, then sympathetically on the situation in Berlin. Emperor William was an old man just turned ninety; he was fast breaking up and any week his death might be announced. Hereditarily the Crown Prince Frederick, now fifty-six, should succeed, and a new reign would open which might introduce political changes of moment to other countries as well as Germany. The new reign was indeed to open, but only to prove one of the shortest in history.

In January, 1887, a Shadow fell on the House of Hohenzollern, the Shadow that must one day fall on every living creature. It was noticed that the Crown Prince was hoarse, had caught a cold, or something of the kind. A stay at Ems did him no good, Doctors Tobold and von Bergmann, the leading specialists of the day, were consulted, a laryngoscopic examination followed, the presence of cancer was strongly suspected, and an operation was advised. At this juncture, at the suggestion, it is said, of Queen Victoria, it was decided to summon the specialist of highest reputation in England, Sir Morell Mackenzie, who, having examined the patient, and basing his opinion on a report of Professor Virchow's, declared that the growth was not malignant. It was now May, and on Mackenzie's advice the patient visited England, where, accompanied by Prince William, he was present at the celebration of Queen Victoria's Jubilee. Some months after his return to the Continent were spent with his family in Tirol and Italy, until November found him in San Remo, where a meeting of famous surgeons from Vienna, Berlin, and Frankfort-on-Main finally diagnosed the existence of cancer, and Mackenzie coincided with the judgment.

The old Emperor died on March 9th. He had taken cold on March 3rd, and on the 7th a chronic ailment of the kidneys from which he suffered became worse, he could not sleep, his strength began to ebb, and it was clear the end was near. On the 6th, however, he was able to speak for a few minutes with Prince William, with Bismarck, and with his only daughter, the Grand Duchess of Baden, who had arrived post-haste the night before to be present at the death-bed. The Grand Duchess, as the Emperor spoke, besought him not to tire himself by talking. "I have no time to be tired," he murmured, in a flicker of the sense of duty which had been a lifelong feature of his character, and a few hours later he passed quietly away. The funeral, headed by Prince William and the Knights of the Black Eagle, took place on the 20th. The new Emperor Frederick, who had hurried from San Remo on receiving news of the Emperor's condition, was too ill to join it, but stood behind a closed window of his palace and saluted as the coffin went by.

The incidents of the Emperor Frederick's ascent of the throne, the amnesty and liberal-minded proclamations to his people, and in particular the heroic resignation with which he bore his fate, are events of common knowledge. One of them was the so-called Battenberg affair. Queen Victoria desired a marriage between Princess Victoria, the present Emperor's sister, then aged twenty-two, and Prince Alexander of Battenberg, at that time Prince of Bulgaria, so as to secure him against Russia by an alliance with the imperial house of Germany. Prince Bismarck objected on the ground that the marriage would show Germany in an unfriendly light at St. Petersburg, and might subject a Prussian princess to the risk of expulsion from Sofia. Another account is that the Chancellor feared an increase of English influence at the German Court with the Prince of Bulgaria as its channel. In any case, the result of the Chancellor's opposition was to place the sick Emperor in a delicate and painful situation. It was ended by his yielding to the Chancellor's representations, and the marriage did not come off.

Meanwhile, the Emperor's malady was making fatal progress. The Shadow was growing darker and more formidable. A season of patiently-borne suffering followed, until Death in his terrific majesty appeared and another Emperor occupied the throne.