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No. 48. | Vienna, 2 December 1898. | Second Year.

Farewell and Reunion.

Epilogue to the Palestine Journey of Wilhelm II. By O. Erter.

Before the German Emperor set out upon his journey, Grand Duke Friedrich of Baden came to Potsdam to take his leave, and before the Emperor returned home to the Palace of Potsdam he visited the Grand Duke in the castle of Baden-Baden, in order to pass with him some hours of joyful reunion. At the parting the Emperor had appointed the Grand Duke, for the time of his absence in foreign lands, as it were Regent of the Empire, and when the two saw one another again after a separation of six weeks, the greeting was, as eye-witnesses report, deeply moved and of affecting cordiality.

There is in the Emperor's relation to the Grand Duke so much that is homely, human and inward, that it seems to us one may pass calmly by those political solvers of riddles who still seek, with their sceptical sagacity, to misjudge the significance and the success of the Oriental journey of Wilhelm II., in order to dwell all the more reverently upon the picture which this relation between the two princes, unique of its kind, presents. And they are indeed two princely personalities, each of whom for himself compels the liveliest and most sympathetic interest: the uncle a kindly, wise lord in white hair, filled with the most clarified idealism; the nephew fiery, young, energetic, and full of great conceptions which afford the whole world ever new stimulation. One tells nobody anything new in recalling that Grand Duke Friedrich of Baden embodies, in a direct line from the old Emperor Wilhelm, the great national tradition of the new German Empire; as consort of the old Emperor's only daughter he was the first among the German princes to attach himself to the development which led to the establishment of the Empire and of the imperial dignity. Indeed, perhaps never has a prince, in his noble, citizenly simplicity, cast so deep a glance into a great and complicated national soul as Grand Duke Friedrich into the German, and never again has a prince been so surrounded as he by grateful national veneration. He concluded the first military convention with Prussia, which, without preceding severe trials in the national war of brothers, was the forerunner of the remaining military conventions that formed the foundation of German unification; and when on the 18th of January 1871 the imperial proclamation took place in the palace of Versailles, it was Grand Duke Friedrich who first greeted the new Emperor with an enthusiastic acclamation.

That is unforgotten, and unforgotten too for all time will be the mild, people-loving rule of the Grand Duke, which fills the fair south-western corner of the German Empire with prosperous peace and comfortable welfare. No narrow prejudice of a political or confessional kind clouds this rule; only wanton obtrusiveness has at times occasioned so-called Culturkampf movements in the land of Baden, while in the highest seat of government distinguished Jews, eminent in mind and character, such as Ellstätter, have laboured in the spirit of the enlightened and tolerant sovereign. Grand Duke Friedrich has already crossed the threshold of old age; when severe illness befell him a year ago, the whole German people looked with deeply sincere anxiety towards his sick-bed, an anxiety that was driven away by joyful sympathy when the Grand Duke was restored to health. The German people connects grateful national memories with his figure; it likes to think of it in union with the lofty figure of the first Emperor, as with that of the Emperor Friedrich, who as "our Fritz" lives on enduringly, like an inextinguishable ideal figure, in the memory of the South Germans. And into this recollection, which has almost become legend, there plays the national delight in the favourite German university of Heidelberg, which was ever guarded and cherished by the Grand Duke too like a precious jewel of freedom of teaching.

Emperor Wilhelm II., who himself spins onward with restless zeal the tradition which grandfather and father have bequeathed to him, follows the natural bent not merely of his fiery national feeling, but also of his high-pitched ideal aims, in devoting to the Baden uncle the most devoted veneration. Not merely because Grand Duke Friedrich and Grand Duchess Luise are his nearest kin of the former generation, but because a noble elective affinity of sentiments and of world-view the nephew with the uncle con-