Behind him stands the embodiment of all that Prussian kultur and
efficiency mean, wooden uninventiveness, clockwork accuracy of
movement--without soul or inspiration. He himself is thin and
scraggy--Raemaekers has intensified these characteristics, but even so
the caricature of the reality is more accurate than unkind. Many months
ago, this vacuous heir of the house of Hohenzollern set to work on the
task of overcoming France, and the result ... may be found in bundles
of four, going back to the incinerators beyond Aix, in the piled
corpses before the French positions at and about Verdun; some of the
results, the swag of the decadent burglar, went back in sacks from the
châteaux that this despicable thing polluted and robbed as might any
Sikes from Portland or Pentonville.
He is the embodiment, himself, of the last phase of Prussian kultur.
Somewhere back in the history of Prussia its rulers had to invent and
to create, and then kultur brought forth hard men; later, it became
possible to copy, and then kultur brought forth mechanical perfection
rather than creative perfection, systematised its theories of life and
work, and brought into being a class of men just a little meaner, more
rigid, more automaton-like, than the original class; having reduced
life to one system, and that without soul or ideal, kultur brought
forth types lacking more and more in originality. Here stands the
culminating type; he will copy the good German Gott--he is incapable of
originating anything--and will “do the same to France.”
As far as lies in his power, he has done it; in the day of reckoning,
Germany will judge how he has done it, and it is to be hoped that
Germany will give him his just reward, for no punishment could be more
fitting. The rest of the world already knows his vacuity, his utter
uselessness, his criminal decadence. As his father was stripped of
the Garter, so is he here shown stripped of the attributes to which,
in earlier days, he made false claim. There remains a foolish knave
posturing--and that is the real Crown Prince of Germany.