The twenty-fifth anniversary of the Emperor William's accession has been
celebrated this week in Berlin and through- out Germany with great splendour and, but for one notable exception, with general and genuine goodwill. The Socialists, who constitute politically one-third of the Empire, have absented themselves from the Reichstag and other ceremonies. As the Times correspondent puts it, "their gloomy abstention from the feast cannot be ignored and is not forgotten. But at the feast itself there are no skeletons." During the last five years people have forgotten most of the old sources of irritation and anxiety, and the Kaiser "is probably better understood and better loved than at any previous time during his reign." In the Reichstag and the Prussian Diet official tributes were paid him for keeping the peace, asserting the Empire to be based on the high moral principles of their forefathers, and embodying them in his own conduct; while at the University Professor Hintze vindicated the Kaiser's loyalty to the Con- stitution, and related a remarkable anecdote of his having burned the testament of Frederick William IV., which was handed to him on his father's death. This document contained Frederick William IV.'s advice, to any of his successors who might take it, to reverse the Constitution before taking his oath on accession. The Kaiser told Professor Hintze that from the moment be received it he felt as if he had a barrel of gunpowder in his house, and he had no peace until he destroyed it. On Wednesday the celebrations culminated in the congratulations of the States forming the Empire, and a magnificent procession and pageant of handicrafts.
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