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during the maneuvers. At one point, the kaiser decided to get directly involved, and he took over command of a brigade. I went with him while he ordered them about. The German High Command wasn’t too pleased, but they didn’t toady up to him either. Within a few hours he’d led his brigade into an ambush, and the referees ruled it defeated. He sulked for hours. It didn’t get any better when his own senior officers later analyzed his performance and pointed out his many mistakes.”
    Roosevelt chuckled. “Good grief. I assume he had them beheaded or something appropriate.”
    “Hardly. Even he would never do that to those of his own class. No, he would have banished his critics. They later softened the blow by acknowledging that affairs of state and the need to run an empire had doubtless prevented him from keeping his military skills up to date.”
    “He accepted that?”
    Patrick laughed at the memory. “Like a child being forgiven a minor transgression and allowed to play outside again. Gentlemen, the kaiser is a very immature fellow, in many ways just a forty-year-old child. A very dangerous child, however. He is the absolute ruler of a militaristic state, and the military supports him utterly. Some people may think him ludicrous, but not his generals. To them he is the descendant of Frederick the Great, and they think he will lead them to glory. Bloody glory.”
    Roosevelt started to say something, but McKinley shushed him. “Tell me about their army.”
    “Sir, it is huge—almost half a million men on active service with again as many in reserve. It is modern, efficient, and brutal.”
    “Brutal?”
    “Yes, sir, brutal.” He told them that although he’d been impressed with the army as a whole, it was their behavior in China that had stunned him, even sickened him.
    “Sir, they were told by that same childlike Kaiser Wilhelm that they were being sent to China to save white men and women from the evils of the yellow race. The kaiser told them that the Chinese were descendants of the Huns and his soldiers should remember that, and be even more brutal than the Huns in order to impress them with German superiority.”
    McKinley was clearly shocked. “And that is how they behaved?”
    “Yes, sir. Their command was furious that the siege of the legations in Peking was over when they arrived, so they amused themselves with punitive marches about the countryside. Sir, they burned, looted, raped, and murdered! It was barbarism, it was savagery, and it was inhuman! And it was so unnecessary. The rebellion was over and all they did was slaughter innocent peasants.”
    Patrick sagged back in his chair at the memory of the stacked dead, the maimed, and the black smoke pouring from the pitiful Chinese hovels while the survivors wailed and screamed. “It was then I decided that my continued presence in China served no earthly purpose, so I requested permission from our attaché in Peking to leave.”
    McKinley nodded solemnly. “And well you did. And these obscene orders came from your charming friend the kaiser?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Major, is he capable of further erratic behavior?”
    “President McKinley, he is a person who is extremely willful, and he can be totally irresponsible. It may be that power has corrupted him. It is a tragedy that he is in total control of a country as strong and militaristic as Germany. There are no checks on him. Their parliament, the Reichstag, has no real power.”
    Patrick paused and took a deep breath. What was the saying—in for a penny, in for a pound? “Is he capable of something erratic and tragic? Yes, gentlemen, without question. He is capable of something as gigantic as declaring war on the United States and launching an invasion if he thought he’d been insulted.”
    There was silence in the room. McKinley and Roosevelt stared at him. Finally the president spoke, his voice icy and calm. “I thought you said you knew nothing about your summons here.”
    Now I’ll