The All-Highest, so we are told, loves a joke at another’s expense, a
trait in his character essentially barbaric. Raemaekers reproduces the
twinkle in the Imperial eye as William of Potsdam offers to a quondam
ally the foot which belongs to his senile and helpless brother of
Hapsburg. The roar of anguish from the prostrate octogenarian provokes,
as we see, not pity but a grim smile. Italy’s monarch, we may imagine,
is muttering to himself:--
_Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes._
The bribe, wrenched from another, was, of course, indignantly rejected,
but one wonders what the secret feelings of the Hapsburgs may be
towards the Hohenzollerns. We know that the Turk cherishes no love
for the Hun who has beguiled him, but we cannot gauge as yet the real
strength or weakness of the bond between the Huns on the one hand and
the Austrians and Hungarians on the other. Raemaekers has pourtrayed
Franz Josef flat on his back. In the language of the ring he is “down
and out.” Possibly it may have been so from the beginning. At any rate,
in this country, there is an amiable disposition to regard Franz Josef
as a victim rather than an accomplice, a weakling writhing beneath the
jack-boot of Prussia, impotent to hold his own. It may not be so. Time
alone will reveal the truth.
But this much is reasonably certain. When peace is declared, the
sincere friendship which once existed between ourselves and the Dual
Monarchy may be re-established, but many years must pass before we
forgive or forget the Huns. They are boasting to-day that as a nation
they are self-sufficing and self-supporting. Amen! Most of us desire
nothing better than to leave them alone till they have mended their
manners and purged themselves of a colossal and unendurable conceit.
I cannot envisage Huns playing tennis at Wimbledon, or English girls
studying music at Leipzig. The grass in the streets of Homburg will
not, for many years, be trodden out by English feet; the harpies of
hotel keepers throughout the Happy Fatherland will prey, it may be
presumed, upon their fellow Huns. Then they will fall to “strafing”
each other instead of England. And then, as now, their mouthings will
provoke inextinguishable laughter.