Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/530

496 never to meddle with the affairs of the Old World, even though as American citizens we are permitted to take a warm interest in the destinies of the peoples from whom we sprang or to whom we are bound in sympathy. This mourning service, thousands of miles from the country which has been ruled by the scepter of the departed Emperor, has therefore nothing of the perfunctory tribute of allegiance which the subject is wont to pay to his sovereign. Neither do we speak the language in which that allegiance traditionally expresses itself. The universal and free expression of opinion here indicates how genuine is the feeling expressed in Germany; and our simpler words carried across the sea are evidence of the mourning that is there expressed in more formal speech. A common sorrow makes the whole world kin.

This is, indeed, a rare manifestation. How many kings have died in this century whose death did not elicit more sympathy in America than any ordinary event of general interest! Why, then, this general emotion after Kaiser Wilhelm's death? Why these flags at half-mast, these eloquent eulogies, this universal impulse to lay a wreath upon the dead Kaiser's grave? He was certainly no republican. Forty years ago he helped to suppress with relentless power the revolutionary insurrections the spirit of which found almost undivided approval in America. His severe assertions of princely authority by divine right, his principles as to the share of the will of the people in the government, his preference given to the military element in the organism of State were more than foreign to American ideas. The development of constitutional forms in Germany under his dominion appeared to American ways of thinking little in harmony with the spirit of this century and the civilization of the German people. Not a few of his measures of government suffered the severest criticism from Americans. These