Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/531

Rh things would have sufficed in determining the judgment passed upon any other prince. But with all this Kaiser Wilhelm was by far the most popular monarch among Americans whom this century has seen, aye, even more, a truly popular man.

We all know the reason. Under his auspices was satisfied that profound yearning which the German had carried in his heart through so many years of misfortune and humiliation, the yearning to be once more a united and great people. Thus he was at the same time a King and a popular leader. In indelible characters his name is written upon the monument which in the history of the world marks the rebirth of a great nation. Like a heroic poem appeared this tremendous event which our times witnessed with amazement and upon which posterity will look back with wonder. And this heroic poem tells of the warrior King, as he, the snow of old age upon his head, surrounded by his paladins, in the midst of his armed people led his armies into the field and piled victory upon victory; how he then came home adorned with the imperial dignity as the emblem of the finally united and now powerful and glorious nation, and how he, centuries hence, will live in the history and legends of the German people, like Frederick Barbarossa, a figure standing in dim, mythical splendor.

This was Kaiser Wilhelm who, when the one great deed had illumined all his past, entered into the heart of the Germans, as a national hero, crowned with victory, whom this heart with German fidelity and gratitude held and cherished as an honored national patriarch, whose joys and sorrows, hopes and cares, the people felt as their own; whose wishes were seldom crossed without regret; before whose window day after day the multitudes assembled to catch one more look of his countenance, and to cheer his old eyes with signs of attachment; whose