Only it was not Prussia we were living in, and it was not the year 1720,
so the air tingled occasionally with other tales of little salutary
lessons administered to our Royal upstart on his style of pursuing the
pleasures considered suitable to a Prince. One day it was told of him
that, having given a cup to be raced for on the Bob-run, he was wroth
to find on the notice-board of entries the names of a team of highly
respectable little Englishmen who are familiar on the racecourse; and,
taking out his pencil-case, he scored them off, saying, “My cup is for
gentlemen, not jockeys,” whereupon a young English soldier standing by
had said: “We’re not jockeys here, sir, and we’re not princes; we are
only sportsmen.”
I cannot vouch for that story, but I can certainly say that, after a
particularly flagrant and deliberate act of rudeness, imperilling the
safety of several persons in the village street, the Crown Prince of
Germany was told to his foolish face by an Englishman, who need not be
named, that he was a fool, and a damned fool, and deserved to be kicked
off the road.
And this is the mindless, but mischievous, person, the ridiculous
buccaneer, born out of his century, who was permitted to interfere
in the destinies of Europe; to help to determine the fate of tens of
millions of men on the battlefields, and the welfare of hundreds of
millions of women and children in their homes. What wild revel the
invisible powers of evil must have held in Berlin on that night of
August 1, 1914, after the Kaiser had thrown down his pen!