Evening Post. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1915.

Evening Post, Volume xc, Issue 79, 1 October 1915, Page 6

Evening Post. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1915.

"BEFORE GOD & HISTORY" ** In his review of the first year of the war the Kaiser declared "before God and history" that the responsibility did not lie at his door. Whoever else is to blame, he is innocent. Peace has been his consistent aim ever since he came to the throne. The apostolic precept to seek peace has been always before his eyes, and if he has not been able to ensue it that is the result of circumstances over which <he has no control. In the greatest military career that the world' has ever seen — a career that occupied some twenty years and ravaged aJmost all Europe with fire and sword — Napoleon is credited with the slaughter of 5,000,000 people. The man who was responsible for the present war will probably have surpassed this record before he sees the end of it. In two years the total loss to Europe in Eves destroyed or maimed will certainly have exceeded 10,000,000, and nobody expects that the war will have run its course in less than two years. A slaughter that would have staggered even Napoleon will soon be to somebody's credit. The arch-crimi-nal may be the Tsar or M. Poincare, or Sir Edward Grey, or the most appalling crime of history may* be, so to speak, in commission among a syndicate of criminals. But the Kaiser has not been either a principal or a subordinate in the ungodly company. On the contrary, he has spared no effort to thwart their designs upon the peace of Europe. We know it for certain, for he himself has said it. "A year has. elapsed,'* said the Kaiser in the manifesto to which we Have referred, "since I was obliged to call the German people to arms, and an unprecedented time of bloodshed has befallen Europe and the world. Before God and history my conscience is clear. I did not will the war." *• "Into the tempting speculations which are opened up by the Kaiser's appeal to God, it is not for us "to wander far. The intimate, not to 'Say confidential, terms on which he lives with the Deity fill one's mind with wonder, if not awe, and the privilege appears all the more impressive when we know that it runs in the family. Even in relation to the career of the Great Frederick — whose theology waa not his strong pomt — has not the Kaiser claimed the Almighty as "the Hohenzollerns' old ally"? The brigand of genius who by the Divine favour was enabled to steal Silesia and dismember Poland would doubtless smile to hear that the old alliance still continues. The treatment of Belgium he might well regard as a triumph of the same spirit which inspired those supreme manifestations of his exemplary piety. But Frederick might be more candid than Wilhelm as to the source of that inspiration. "We can see in the fall of Warsaw," telegraphed the Kaiser to the King of Wurtemberg, " a significant step on the road along which the Almighty by His grace has led us hitherto." In a cartoon entitled " Very Unfair," Sir F. C. Gould has depicted the King, not of Heaven but of "another place," as reading this message, and exclaiming, "Well, I'm dashed if that's fair! It has been my job right through from the start." This view of the Kaiser's theology will be widely shared by those who venture to judge the alliance of which he boasts by its fruits. As to the appeal to history,) we can read the ! answer already in the judgment of practically the whole civilised world outside the belligerent nations. Tlie most astounding thing about this appeal of the Kaiser is that about 90 per cent, of his subjects are confident of his innocence, , even if his own mind is troubled with occasional doubts. The matter is indeed hardly deserving of serious discussion except as a problem in national psychology. The most warlike nation in the world has been taught by its masters to believe that it is ringed in by bloodthirsty foes against whom they are its only protection. Even little Belgium is not free from the blood-guilti-ness which has shattered the German dream of peace ! As the French proverb says, " It was the rabbit that began it."