No. XL.
(_From a German._)
Yes, and for the very reason that I am a German I am speaking to you,
so that you may know what one German at least thinks of you and your
deeds. For I know that even where you sit walled about by your flatterers,
ramparted against the intrusion of any fresh breath of criticism, and
protected by entanglements of barbed wire against any hint of doubt as to
your god-like attributes--even there I know that my voice shall in time
reach you, and you shall become aware that there is a German who dares
to say of you what millions of Germans think and soon will dare to say.
You are the man, Sir, who by a word spoken in a seasonable moment might
have forbidden the War, and this word you refused to speak because,
knowing your own preparations for war and those of the nations whom
you forced to be your enemies, you anticipated an easy and a swift
triumph. You believed that, after spending a few thousands of men and a
few millions of marks, victory would be yours, and you would be able,
as an unquestioned conqueror, to dictate peace to those who had dared
to oppose you. And thus in a few months at the most you would return
to Berlin and prance along the flower-strewn streets at the head of
your victorious and but little-injured regiments. It is told of you
that lately, when you visited a great hospital crowded with maimed and
shattered men, your vain and shallow mind was for a moment startled by
the terrible sight, and you murmured, "It was not I who willed this."
In part you were right. You did not consciously will to bring upon
your country the suffering and the misery you have caused, because you
were willing to take the gambler's chance; but in the sight of God,
to whom you often appeal, you will not escape the responsibility for
having steadily thrust peace and conciliation aside when, as I say,
by one word you might have avoided war.
Germany, you will say, is a great nation and cannot brook being insulted
and defied. Great Heaven, Sir, who denied that Germany was great? Who
wished to insult or defy her? Not France, whose one desire was to
live in peace; not Russia, still bleeding from wounds suffered at the
hands of Japan; not England, still, as of old, intent on her commercial
development, though anxious, naturally enough, for her Fleet; not Italy,
bound to you by a treaty designed to guard against aggression. It is
true that all nations were becoming weary of a violent and hectoring
diplomacy, of a restless and jealous punctilio seeking out occasions
for misunderstandings and quarrels, and rushing wildly from one crisis
to another; but under your direction this intolerable system had been
patented and put in operation by Germany and by no other nation. It was
as though a _parvenu_, uncertain of his manners and doubtful as to his
reception, should burst violently into a _salon_ filled with quiet people
and, having upset the furniture and thrown the china ornaments about,
should accuse all the rest of treading on his toes and insulting him. So
did Germany act, and for such actions you, who had autocratic power--you,
at whose nod Chancellors trembled--you loved their tremors--and Generals
quaked with fear--must be held responsible. What low strain of vulgarity
was it, what coarse desire to bluster and rant yourself into fame and
honour, rather than to deserve them by a magnanimous patience and a
gentleness beyond reproach, that drove you on your perilous way? It was
your pettiness that at the last plunged you into the War.
And now that you have been in it for little short of two years, how
stands the Fatherland, and where are the visions of easy and all but
immediate victory? Germany is bleeding at every pore. Her soldiers are
brave; but to confirm you on your throne you force them day by day to
a slaughter in which millions have already been laid low. That other
nations are suffering too is for me no consolation. My thoughts are
centred on Germany, once so nobly great, and now forced by a restless
and jealous lunatic into a war to which there seems no end.