No. II.
(_From the Rev. Dr. DRYANDER, Court Chaplain._)
MOST ALLGRACIOUS SIR,--Now that I have finished
writing my sermon for next Sunday I can find time for a
little quiet sound thinking by way of a change. I can say
quite seriously that I am tired to death of writing and
preaching sermons. It is not permitted, highly honoured
EMPEROR, that in my sermon I say anything displeasing to
your Imperial self. I must not remind you that you are a
man like other men, a man liable to weakness and error,
swayed by temper, capable, since your position gives you
power, of trampling on the rights of others in a moment of
passion, of confounding justice with your own desires and
of mistaking the promptings of ambition or malice or envy
for an inspiration from Heaven itself. No, I must not say
all this or any of it, but, on the contrary, I must describe
you to yourself and your family and the chosen intimates
who flatter you beyond even my power to flatter, I must
describe you, I say, as the Lord's, anointed, as the vice-gerent
of God on earth, as being raised by God's favour
above all human foibles, in short, as being supremely right
and just whenever your faults and your injustice cry aloud
for the divine punishment. Even if you were a thoroughly
good and sensible man, _totus teres atque rotundus_, instead
of being a bundle of caprice and prejudice, the task would
be difficult. As it is, it is unpleasant and ought to be impossible.
My sermons exist to prove that I have attempted
it with such courage as I could command, although in these
conditions courage is only another name for the cowardly
compliance that causes a man to detest himself and to take
a low view of human nature.
At any rate I have done my best for you. How many
times have I not bidden the faithful to fall down before you
and worship you? Have I not proved from Holy Scripture
that your lightest word is spoken, not by you, but by the
Almighty; that you, in fact, are something higher and
better in bones and flesh and blood and brains than anything
that mere ordinary mortals can pretend to be? I can
see you nodding your head in Imperial approval when such
phrases came from me, and all the time I knew in my
heart that the God of whom you were thinking, and to
whose intimacy you pretended, was not the God under
whom a Christian minister takes service, but a being
formed after the image of a Prussian drill-sergeant who
wears a pointed helmet and a turned-up moustache.
Sir, I have my doubts as to this fearful war in which we
are engaged. You entered upon it, you say, to carry out
your treaty obligations to Austria. Treaties, no doubt, are
sacred things. But why, then, was not the treaty obligation
to Belgium as sacred as that with Austria? Was it
because Belgium was weak and (as you thought) defenceless
that you invaded her country, slaughtered her people,
and sacked her towns? Was this the reason for the foul
treatment of Louvain? And is it agreeable, do you think,
to the Almighty that the glorious Cathedral of Rheims
should be bombarded and ruined even by German shells?
When the years have rolled on and you shall have been
called away to render an account of what you did on earth,
for what reasons will you be remembered amongst men?
Not because you established justice and did good deeds--or
even great ones--for your people, but because you
plunged the world in war in order to feed your vanity,
and laid waste Belgium and shattered the Cathedral of
Rheims. Truly a shining memory.
Yours, in all humility,
DRYANDER.
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Illustration: BOER AND BRITON TOO.
GENERAL BOTHA (_composing telegram to the KAISER_). "JUST OFF TO REPEL
ANOTHER RAID. YOUR CUSTOMARY WIRE OF CONGRATULATION SHOULD BE ADDRESSED:
'BRITISH HEADQUARTERS--GERMAN SOUTH-WEST AFRICA.'"
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Illustration: _Incredulous friend_ (_to soldier invalided home_).
"WHAT--YOU CAPTURED TEN GERMANS BY YOURSELF? GOOD GRACIOUS! HOW DID YOU
DO IT?"
_Tommy._ "I JUST SHOUTED OUT 'WAITER!' AND THEY CAME ALONG."
* * * * *