wedding of King Edward and Queen Alexandra. They could not keep him quiet, so they sat him between two ambassadors, and he slipped down and bit their calves. Nice boy! [Loud laughter.] Dear little lad! [Renewed laughter.] Then when he came to power he commenced to do great things. He even wrote poetry. [Laughter.] Shelley, Schiller, Wordsworth, Gœthe, and Browning weren't in it. Anybody but the Kaiser would have been hanged for it. [Laughter.] Then he painted. My word, what genius! All the newspapers wasted gallons of ink and tons of paper. Rubens, Herkomer, Collier, and all the great painters weren't in it beside the Kaiser. [Laughter.] Do you know, I once had my picture painted, and it was presented to me in public. When it was over I said nice things about the painter, and the paint especially. [Laughter.] I left the platform hugging the picture to my breast, when a dear old lady said, "Turn it around, Mr. Crooks." I did. She looked at it, and said, "My God!" and fainted. [Roars of laughter.] Now, if the Kaiser had painted that, I should have been hung in the National Gallery.
We did everything to please the Kaiser. We gave him a little island called Heligoland to keep him quiet, as something to play with, and then he went and hid his fleet behind it and wouldn't come out. The Germans hate us now more than ever they did before. What have we done? I can well remember the Franco-German War, and for forty-four years we have been living in mortal terror of German militarism. Don't think, you know it is true. So we formed a German friendship. We inaugurated peace associations, brotherhood leagues, etc. We said, "If you please, be so kind, always think of us; we are always cousins, and help us when we are in trouble," and the Kaiser said, "Oh! we'll think it over." [Laughter.] I once proposed the health of the Kaiser. Think of that. [Laughter.] Fancy walking about with that on your conscience. [Laughter.] It's like buying a purse with a shilling in it, and finding three ha'pence. One blessed Sunday morning we gathered in a hall in Berlin, and the chairman had not uttered half a dozen sentences when the military came in and took possession of the meeting. It was a peace meeting! How would you like that, you men who think you would do as well under the Kaiser as under George V? [Applause.] There were four million Socialists and trade unionists in Germany when the war broke out, and only a solitary one raised his voice in opposition. When our men
