WILHELM III, HISTORIAN.

Auckland Star, Volume 32, Issue 32, 6 February 1904, Page 1 (Supplement)

WILHELM 111, HISTORIAN.

(From Our London Correspondent.). !

LONDOX, December 24.

The Kaiser is nothing if not original, and he celebrated his recovery from his recent tracheal trouble last Saturday by informing an admiring, if somewhat sceptical, world that it was the German legion of Wellington's army, in conjunction with Bluchers Prussians, which saved the British army from "if struetion at Waterloo. This is a new reading of military history which may he commended to the latest chroniclers of the great battle—Henry Houssaye and! Judge O'Connor Morris. Botfa those writers show that the fight was nearly lost to us about four in tfce afternoon' through the fall of La Haye Sainte. This was the key of our position, and was mainly held by our German allies. "Tho centre of the line was thus left open," said an aide-de-camp of General vox* Alton, a Hanoverian, an£ we were in periL The issue of the battle was more than doubtful until the arrival of the Bulow Corps of Bluchers army diverted the attention of the French from their centre to their right. The Germans had helped to defend La Hay* Saint? with heroic devotion, but, says Houssaye "the Kielmansegge brigade fell back behind Mont St. Jean; the ELrusp brigade gave way; the whole regiment «? the GumtwECland Hussars wheeled round with it 3 colonel at its head, and at full trot rode away on the high road to Brussels." Ifc would thus appear that wlvst really saved the British army from annihilation was not so much its German legion as its own determined squares.

No battle in history ha_ been so "distorted by the angle of observation" as that of Waterloo, as we call it. Not even its name is agreed upon, for the French allude to it as the battle of Mont St. Jean, and the Germans call it "BeEe Alliance.' In Germany everybody claimst that it was a German victory; the Bel-, gians claim it, with no shadow of right, as their own, while the Frenchmen shrug their shoulders and remember it as a. fight they ought to have won. The Duke of Wellington, who ought to have knowa something of it, was always reticent, but he confessed once that it was a close shave. One can easily pardon th» anxiety of all participants in the fight to make the most of their own work therein, even after the lapse of nearly, ninety years, but the Kaiser might bava remembered that it was due to the tremendous sacrifices of Great Britain thai his own house and his own kingdom were able to struggle through. And ho might have remembered also that th . organiser of victory was an Englishman and that the coming of Blucher, whethetr it saved the day or only drove the Tit* tory home, was part of that Engl.__» man's carefully designed scheme of feaS* tie.