KAISER-PROPHET

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 103, 3 May 1919, Page 9

KAISER-PROPHET

FAILURE OF MARCH • ATTACK

WHY GERMANS REFUSED TO BOMBARD LONDON

BOCHE TRADE MONOPOLY.

Before the ex-Kaiser left Wilhelnishoe he gnvo a farewell address to members of his suite who had been. at the Castle with him, but who were not to accompany him to Holland, writes Mrs. Barnard Masselmanns, sister of the First Secretary of the Dutch Legation at Berlin, in the Sunday Chronicle. lam in .a position to give details of. this speech, which has become known in Berlin as the Imperial Prophecy, and I must leave it to readers of this article to judge for themselves whether the Kaiser is likely to prove a true or false prophet. He. said: —

"Since the failure of our March attack a child could almost have foretold the course that events then would take up to the present, at all events. The Imperial dynasty was bound to be overthrown, and Germany was obviously destined then to be thrown into a, state of internal confusion and conflict. I shall j:nv raake a confession.

"After Bulgaria had gone out of the war, and when it was obvious that we would suffer a- military defeat, [ had thought of openly appealing to the Allies to support me in retaining my throne, and preventing such a revolution as was bound to occur as the result of our defeat. ;

"I believe that motives of self-interest I would have prompted .many people in j England, to which, country my appeal , would have been specially directed, to hu.vo supported me in the proposition that I haif thought of making. But on consideration I came to tho conclusion that public opinion in England would have been too strongly . oppoe'id to the idea to have made' it possible for any ! Government in England to have supported me in such, a proposal. The cries in. England that then found an echo in the hearts of probably 80 per cent, of the population were 'No peace with the Hohenzollerns' and 'Hang the Kaiser.' "However, what is of more importance to us now is the future, and the future of Germany is a matter of vital importance to the whole of the world. Time only will show whether I am right or wrong, but I am firmly convinced that, before another twelve months are past, the Hohenzollern dynasty, will have been restored.. I say that because it is a choice between the restoration of our throne or Germany being kept in a state of internal' conflict for the next ten years If that is to happen no Peace Conference can possibly arrive at a settlement that will bring peace to Europe. To start with, the Allies will have no Government in Germany with whom they can deal. "There are, however, in Germany two parties who would be strongly opposed to the restoration of the Monarchy: I mean the Republicans, who desire to see a Eepublic established, and the extreme Socialists, who desire to see' a Socialistic Government established, not only in Germany, but in every country in the world. EBERT AND SCHEIDEMANN HATED. "But both Republicans and Socialists will .fight to the death to prevent each other achieving .their ..object. The Socialists are as: much opposed to the establishment of a Republican Government as they would be to the restoration of the Monarchy. They no doubt hato me, but they hate Ebert and Scheidemann just as much. Sooner or later these two parties will see how impossible it is for either of them to get the; upper hand, and they will then turn, it may be, in their, despair, .to consent, . however unwillingly, to the idea of the restoration of the Monarchy ; and that i 3 why I' say that it is really inevitable that my dynasty, will one day, occupy the throne again. "But let me say this frankly, that the re-establishment of the Monarchy in Germany at any future time would be impossible without the full support of England. That support may be gained by an open appeal to the English people such as I once contemplated making, and I believe if that appeal had behind it the backing of the United German people it would meet with a favourable reception in England, because it could be supported without depriving the English of. what they call 'the fruits of victory.1 . "And, moreover, the English people have had their national vanity satisfied by being able to inflict the most humiliating torin? upon us. We havo been defeated; we have suffered, indeed, an overwhelming defeat; but the future lies before us, and, believe me, we 'shall rise from our terrible and tragic- fall to regain a position greater than we ever occupied, and to fulfil what I know, and believe, to be our destiny in the world. "When we entered this war we had before us a great object; I need not dwell on what that object was; it is known perfectly well to every person I am speaking to, and it is equally known that the. only way we could accomplish that object was by destroying ' the power of the British Empire. We tried to do that, we very nearly succeeded, but in the end we failed.

■ "Now we have to begin our history, at all events from 1870, all over again, but we can do that hopefully and cheerfully if we have taken to heart the lessons of the past four years. Now let ma say that the great mistake we made, when we .entered on this war, was in thinking that we could achieve'our objects by force, of arms. That was a mistake for several reasons, but chiefly it was a mistake because the military strength required to. accomplish and' achieve thp end that we had in view could never be possessed by any one nation.

"If our military strength had been ten times what it was; the combination of tho peoples of the. world who were opposed to our objects must ultimately have defeated us. . KVERY NATION, IN SUBJECTION.' " Our future greatness, indeed the greatness of every nation, can only be accomplished by what is known as ' peaceful penetration.' I mean to say that we must conquer the world by our superior commercia.l methods until all great countries are brought gradually under the domination of German finance and industrial management. We might in. a hundred years from now bB the greatest nation in the world, having every other nation in economic subjection to us. That is the ideal we must strive after.

" Armies- and armaments will never enable a nation to obtain the position of world-dominion. We thought they could. I will give ypu one example of how a weapon of war, which I personally believed would be a tremendous advantage to us, and which we produced at enormous expense, proved a failure. " Before the war broke out, at a meeting of the Imperial Council, of War, a great attack on London by our Zeppelins was planned to take place at the end of August, 1914. Count Zeppelin put before us all the details of the attack, and it appeared to us that nothing could prevent or iniorlero with the success of this attack, which would result in inflicting

tho most terrible punishment on the enemy's capital. "You must remember that at that time London was absolutely, or almost absolutely, defenceless against attack from the air. AYe knew that our Zeppelins would run no risk to speak of in making this attack, and now I will tell you a secret.

"What happened was this. The Zeppelin crews absolutely refused to undertake the attack. Three of them were shot as the result of their refusal to go, but that made no diU'erence. The crews were perfectly convinced that London was well fortified, and nothing could persuade them to the contrary. The English owed their immunity from this attack to the very efficient organisation of their Secret Service, by which they managed to impress upon the Zeppelin crews the utter impossibility of their being able to cattack London without risking certain destruction to themselves, and nothing we could do could remove that idea from their minds; and even when at last we were able to get crews to venture to London the results achieved were never worth the risk and expense involved by these attacks, and; of course, later on, as we all know, the English got a very effective method of defending themselves against the Zeppelins. "Our big guns,, that \vqre to have enabled us to capture Paris, also, as'all the world knows, failed to enable us to achieve this object. _ Turning to the future again, I believe that all great nations will see the futility of producing armaments on a large scale. The production of armaments on a large scale is absolutely useless unless it is going to enable you to obtain military conquests, and, as I have ,said, one oE the lessons of the war is that that cannot be done by Bach a msaris. I venture to prophesy that in ten years' tirno from now Essen i will be the home -;>f a gteat peaceful industry, and as sur.b v.-ill be far more useful to us. in enabling us to achieve the J objects we must still have in view tHan I by manufacturing gigantic guns or other i weapons of war. j "Another thing I venture to proj phesy is this, tha,t the small nations of I the world, who will have to live under | the sovereignty of some big nation, will j not trouble very muc.b. about the flag of j the country who will rule over them. The sovereign nation that can bring to them the best material conditions will be the nation that they will desire to be ruled by. Let them fly the English flag if they wish ; that flag will never do as any harm. COMMERCIAL WAR COMING. "One of our fatal errors in the pant was our conception that by planting the German eagle where'the English flag flew—where for all the harm it could ever do tis it might fly for ever—we should benefit ourselves. We must never make that mistake a-gain. The development of a nation and the prosperity of a nation, in the present condition of the' world, must depend upon a nation's commercial prosperity. , ■ "A nation should be developed in precisely the same way as a hig modern business is developed. It may kill its competitors by competition, or it may biiy them outright., In the future when we desire to achieve an object which another nation may not desire to.grant us I will tell you how we shall do it. "We shall accomplish it by methods which our enemies would call 'bribery and corruption,' but that need not trouble us, for these methods will be business methods. I mean that we shall buy the individuals who can secure for us our objects. I leave Germany fully convinced that the immediate future will see the beginning of a new phase in our history that will be pregnant with great and glorious possibilities, and that our destiny as a dominant nation in the world will yet be achieved,"