No. XXXVII.
(_From Dr. LIEBKNECHT._)
If such trifling matters as the meeting of the Reichstag now occupy any
portion of your Majesty's attention, it may please you to learn that my
membership of that august body has been temporarily suspended. At the
same time I should be sorry that your Majesty should labour under any
misapprehension as to what happened. No doubt I was forbidden to speak,
though I am the representative of people whose voices have a right to be
heard even in the unhappy Parliament which is all that the German Empire
is allowed to provide for the subjects of the German KAISER. But I wish
you to understand that I was not silenced before I had said aloud nearly
everything that I had in my mind to say. It is true that I did not make
any formal speech. The bellowing blockheads who now arrogate to themselves
the name of patriots and all the virtues of patriotism were easily able
to prevent me from doing this, and I was forced, therefore, to confine
myself to short and sharp interjections thrown in at appropriate moments
while BETHMANN-HOLLWEG, that arch-impostor, was proving to the whole world
that even if Germany had a good case he is the last man who would be able
to place it in a convincing manner before the judgment of the world.
Your Majesty has had a long practice in the use of words. You pride
yourself on the glorious and beneficial effect of such speeches as that
in which you condescendingly praised the Almighty for having allied
Himself with you, very much, as it appeared, to His own advantage,
or that other speech in which you announced to your conscripts their
duty to shoot down their parents if in some momentary whim you ordered
them to do it, or even that other brave and Imperial harangue in which
you declared your humane and merciful designs on the Chinese people. I
have no doubt, then, that if you could be induced to speak your opinion
fairly and openly you would admit that, though you yourself could, of
course, have done better, I did not do so very badly in my little bout
with poor BETHMANN. At any rate I spoke the truth, which is an inconvenient
course of conduct, and made BETHMANN look the fool that everybody (except,
perhaps, your Majesty) knows him to be.
Indeed, your Majesty, a fool who is also arrogant is a very terrible
thing. When BETHMANN, for instance, spoke of Germany's love for her
neighbours, and in particular for the small nations, he delivered himself
into my hands. All I had to do--and I did it--was to remind him that he
proved his love by jumping upon them and strangling them. In a moment
the whole fabric of his stupid argument was shattered and he was left
gaping open-mouthed and without an answer before the whole world. The
incident showed the man's mind and his disposition in a lightning flash,
and from all countries, even from wretched Belgium and from ruined Serbia,
there came a laugh of hatred and contempt. Why are we so hated? Not
because we are great and powerful and prosperous, but because we make our
greatness an incubus, our power a tyranny and our prosperity an offence.
Fools like BETHMANN do not see this. They and their fellow-fools, some
of them quite brilliant men, with high notions on literature and music and
the drama, are for ever in a state of jealous fear. They have the mania
of persecution and imagine that all other countries are leagued against
them for the purpose of wiping Germany off the map. Then they lose their
unfortunate heads and strike out blindly to right and left. The other
nations have no course open to them except to defend themselves as best
they may, and then Herr BETHMANN and his superior fools shout out that
this wicked defensive proves up to the hilt that when they spoke of
conspiracies they were fully justified and that Germany for her own safety
must smash and in the end control every other country under the sun.
And yet, your Majesty, the time will come when we must have peace. This
pouring out of blood, this tremendous waste of money and lives must some
day have an end. Those are the best patriots who would put a stop to it
as soon as possible, for the longer you defer peace the more difficult
it becomes to make it. We have been told of great victories, but they
profit us not at all. All is desolation and cruelty and confusion. And
those who think most of Germany know best how bitterly she needs peace.
Your truth-telling but suspended subject,