Very happily and very graphically has Raemaekers here pointed the
contrast between the Gargantuan hopes with which the Kaiser and his
Junker army embarked on the War, and the exiguous and shadowy fruits of
their boasted victories up to the present. They foretold a triumphal
entry into the conquered capital of France within a month of the
opening of hostilities. Yet the irony of Fate has, slowly but surely,
cooled the early fever of anticipation. The only captured town where
the All-Highest has found an opportunity of lifting his voice in
exultant pæan is Nish, a secondary city of the small kingdom of Serbia.
There, too, he perforce delayed his jubilation until the lapse of some
eighteen months after the date provisionally and prematurely fixed in
the first ebullition of over-confidence, for his triumphal procession
through Paris.
Nish is a town of little more than 20,000 inhabitants; about the size
of Taunton or Hereford--smaller than Woking or Dartford. Working on
a basis of comparative populations, the Emperor would have to repeat
without more delay his bravery at Nish in 150 towns of the same size
before he could convince his people that he is even now on the point of
fulfilling his first rash promises to them of the rapid overthrow of
his foes. Pursuing the same calculation, he is bound to multiply his
present glories 350 times before he can count securely on spending a
night as conquering hero in Buckingham Palace.
Even the Kaiser must know in his heart that woefully, from his own and
his people’s point of view, did he overestimate his strength at the
outset. For the time he contents himself with the backwater of Nish
for the scene of his oratory of conquest. His vainglorious words may
well prove in their environment the prelude of a compulsory confession
of failure, which is likely to come at a far briefer interval than the
eighteen months which separate the imaginary hope of Paris from the
slender substance of Nish.