Let us imagine this Emperor going through some such profound moral change as befell Count Tolstoy when he quitted his military service in the Caucasus and lived with the peasants on his estate, with this difference that, instead of feeling directly responsible for a village of humble folk, he should come to feel responsible for all the toilers of the "Fatherland" and for the international results of the German army. Let us imagine that in his self-surrender to the humblest of his people, there would gradually grow up in his subconsciousness, forces more ideal than any which had possessed him before; that his interests and thoughts would gradually shift from war and the manoeuvres and extensions of the army, to the unceasing toil, the permanent patience, which lie at the bottom of all national existence;that the life of the common people, which is so infinite in its moral suggestiveness, would open up to him new moral regions, would stir new energies within him, until there would take place one of those strange alterations in personality of which hundreds of examples are re-( 226)-corded. Under a glow of generous indignation, magnanimity, loyalty to his people, a passion of self- surrender to his new ideals, we can imagine that the imperial temperament would waste no time in pipings and regret, but that, his energies being enlisted in an overmastering desire to free the people from the burden of the army, he would drive vigorously in the direction- of his new ideals. It is impossible to imagine him "passive" under this conversion to the newer ideals of peace.
He would no more be passive than St. Paul was after his conversion. He would regard the four million men in Europe shut up in barracks, fed in idleness by toiling peasants, as an actual wrong and oppression. They would all have to be freed and returned to normal life and occupation -- not through the comparatively easy method of storming garrisons, in which he has had training, but through conviction on the part of rulers and people of the wrong and folly of barrack idleness and military glitter. The freeing of the Christians from the oppressions of the Turks, of the Spaniards from the Moslems, could offer no more strenuous task -- always, however, with the added difficulty and complication that the change in the people must be a moral change analogous to the one which had already taken place within himself; that he must be debarred ( 227) from the use of weapons, to which his earlier life had made him familiar; that his high task, while enormous in its proportion, was still most delicate in its character, and must be undertaken without the guarantee of precedent, and without any surety of success. "Smitten with the great vision of social righteousness," as so many of his contemporaries have been, he could not permit himself to be blinded or to take refuge in glittering generalities, but, even as St. Paul arose from his vision and went on his way in a new determination never again changed, so he would have to go forth to a mission, imperial indeed in its magnitude, but "over-imperial"in the sweep of its consequences and in the difficulty of its accomplishment.
Certainly counting all the hours of the Emperor's life spent in camp and court dominated by military pomp and ambition, he has given more than ten years to military environment and much less than ten years to the bulk of his people, and it would not be impossible to imagine such a conversion due to the reaction of environment and interest. Such a change having taken place, should we hold him royal in temper or worthy of the traditions of knight- errantry, if he were held back by commercial considerations, if he hesitated because the Krupp Company could sell no more guns and would be thrown out of business ? We should ( 228) say to this Emperor whom our imaginations have evoked, Were your enthusiasms genuine enough, were your insights absolutely true, you would see of how little consequence these things really are, and how easily adjusted. Let the Krupp factories, with their tremendous resources in machinery and men, proceed to manufacture dredging machines for the reclaiming of the waste land in Posen; let them make new inventions to relieve the drudgery of the peasant, agricultural implements adequate to Germany's agricultural resources and possibilities. They will find need for all the power of invention which they can comrnand, all the manufacturing and commercial ability which they now employ. It is part of your new vocation to adjust the industries now tributary to the standing armies and organization of warfare, to useful and beneficent occupations; to transform and readjust all their dependent industries, from the manufacturing of cannon and war-ships to that of gold braid and epaulets. It is your mission to revive and increase agriculture, industry, and commerce, by diverting all the energy which is now directed to the feeding, clothing, and arming of the idle, into the legitimate and normal channels of life.
It is certainly not more difficult to imagine such a change occurring to an entire people than in the ( 229) mind and purpose of one man -- in fact, such changes are going on all about us.
