There is one whole field of the evil international influence of
Germany in which Ferdinand of Bulgaria is a much more important and
symbolic person than William of Prussia. He is, of course, a cynical
cosmopolitan. He is in great part a Jew, and an advanced type of that
_mauvais juif_ who is the principal obstacle to all the attempts of
the more genuine and honest Jews to erect a rational status for their
people.
Like almost every man of this type, he is a Jingo without being a
patriot. That is to say, he is of the type that believes in big
armaments and in a diplomacy even more brutal than armaments; but
the militarism and diplomacy are not humanised either by the ancient
national sanctities which surround the Czar of Russia, or the
spontaneous national popularity which established the King of Serbia.
He is not national, but international; and even in his peaceful
activities has been not so much a neutral as a spy.
In the accompanying cartoon the Dutch caricaturist has thrust with his
pencil at the central point of this falsity. It is something which is
probably the central point of everything everywhere, but is especially
the central point of everything connected with the deep quarrels of
Eastern Europe. It is religion. Russian Orthodoxy is an enormously
genuine thing; Austrian Romanism is a genuine thing; Islam is a genuine
thing; Israel, for that matter, is also a genuine thing.
But Ferdinand of Bulgaria is not a genuine thing; and he represents
the whole part played by Prussia in these ancient disputes. That
part is the very reverse of genuine; it is a piece of ludicrous and
transparent humbug. If Prussia had any religion, it would be a northern
perversion of Protestantism utterly distant from and indifferent to the
controversies of Slavonic Catholics. But Prussia has no religion. For
her there is no God; and Ferdinand is his prophet.