MY RECOLLECTIONS OF WILLIAM 11-1879-1903 245 



sense as well as the reflective powers of Germans seem to 

 show them that the real dangers to their country come 

 from a very different quarter from men who promote 

 hatreds of race, class, and religion within the empire, and 

 historic international hatreds without it. 



So, too, various charges have been made against the 

 Emperor as regards the United States. From time to time 

 there came, during my stay, statements in sundry Ameri 

 can newspapers, some belligerent, some lacrymose, re 

 garding his attitude toward our country. It seemed to 

 be taken for granted by many good people during our 

 Spanish War that the Emperor was personally against 

 us. It is not unlikely that he may have felt sympathy for 

 that forlorn, widowed Queen Eegent of Spain, making so 

 desperate a struggle to save the kingdom for her young 

 son ; if so, he but shared a feeling common to a very large 

 part of humanity, for certainly there have been few more 

 pathetic situations ; but that he really cared anything for 

 the success of Spain is exceedingly doubtful. The Ho- 

 henzollern common sense in him must have been for years 

 vexed at the folly and fatuity of Spanish policy. He 

 probably inherits the feeling of his father, who, when 

 [visiting the late Spanish monarch some years before his 

 death, showed a most kindly personal feeling toward Spain 

 and its ruler, and an intense interest in various phases of 

 art developed in the Spanish peninsula; but, in his diary, 

 let fall remarks which show his feeling toward the whole 

 existing Spanish system. One of these I recall especially. 

 Passing a noted Spanish town, he remarks : * Here are ten 

 churches, twenty monasteries, and not a single school. &quot; 

 No Hohenzollern is likely to waste much sympathy on a 

 nation which brings on its fate by preferring monasticism 

 to education ; and never during the Spanish War did he 

 or his government, to my knowledge, show the slightest 

 leaning toward our enemies. Certain it is that when 

 sundry hysterical publicists and meddlesome statesmen 

 of the Continent proposed measures against what they 

 thought the dangerous encroachments of our Eepublic, he 



