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
paean 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 overconfidence, 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.