From time to time of late the Kaiser has posed as the champion of peace.
His official spokesman, Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, has announced the
Imperial readiness to stay the war--on his master's own terms, which he
disdains to define precisely.
The Emperor and his advisers are involved in a tangle of miscalculations
which infest the conduct of the war alike in the field of battle and the
council-chamber. But no wild imaginings could encourage a solid hope
that the Chancellor's peaceful professions would be taken seriously by
anybody save his own satellites. Loudly the compliant Minister vaunted
in the Reichstag his country's military successes, but he could point to
no signs either of any faltering in military preparations on the part of
the Allies, or of their willingness to entertain humiliating conditions
of peace.
Even in Germany clear visions acknowledge that Time is fighting
valiantly on the side of Germany's foes, and that peace can only come
when the Central Powers beg for it on their knees.
It is improbable that the Kaiser and his Chancellor now harbour many
real illusions about the future, although they may well be anxious to
disguise even to themselves the ultimate issues at stake in the war.
Their home and foreign policy seems to be conceived in the desperate
spirit of the gambler. They appear to be recklessly speculating on the
chances of a pacificist role conciliating the sympathy of neutrals. They
count on the odds that they may convert the public opinion of
non-combatant nations to the erroneous belief that Germany is the
conqueror, and that further resistance to her is futile. But so far the
game has miscarried. The recent German professions of zeal for peace
fell in neutral countries on deaf or impatient ears. The braggart
bulletins of the German Press Bureau have been valued at their true
worth. Neutral critics have found in Bethmann-Hollweg's cry for peace
mere wasted breath
The Chancellor and his master are perilously near losing among neutrals
the last shreds of reputation for political sagacity.