NEMESIS

Evening Star, Issue 16409, 27 April 1917, Page 6

NEMESIS

‘ -AND THE KAJBSER. This wonderful article, written by a man who knows Germany well, and wh was formerly “honored” with the per sonal friendship of the Kaiser, throws a lurid light ou the recent German ■ peace suggestions. The picture of a oonsdousftricken monarch,. eager to end. a war o' his own seeking, a war which has steeped his own people in guilty blood, is as arrest-' mg as it is true. A grim fear haunts the consciousstricken soul of the Kaieer. He is afraid that ho will die before peace has come to the suffering humanity of Europe, Nemosis in the shape of this fear pursues him like a relentless shadow. The fear lies a! the back of all his arrhgant talk ; it under runs all his blasphemous boastings. The fear accompanies him in the feverish rushes from one blood-sodden battlefield to aide-de-camp who never sleeps; it is with him when the fresh German casualty lists, still damp from the printing presses, blankly meet his stare, or when, with false-ringing martial speech, he sends a new division of his country’s dwindling reserves to their death. —The Growing Fear. Every time tho Kaiser tragically summens the world to believe “'I never willed this war,” the fear of death with the war still raging grips him by the throat, and they who wait in the porch of Emperors think curiously of tho corpse-like paleness of the Prussian King’s face at such times. There was good reason why ho stayed away from the funeral of his blood accomplice, tho aged Emperor Francis Joseph, who closed his eyes on an inglorious reign with the words “ I am tired.” The associations were too morbid for him, and too likely to feed the growing fear in his ou n breast. This Emperor died befon knowing the issue pf the conflict which Iw helped to provoke. Alight not the same fate attend his brother in crime? All official Germany knows the dreadful secret; it has sped through the whisporiim galleries of the East.' The Sultan, with his^fatalistic temperament, is puzzled by the Kaiser’s mental obsession, but King I' eidmand of Bulgaria, hiding himself in Vienna understands. He has felt sometiling of the same fear himself. —lll-balanced and Emotional,— Tire Kaiser would giro, anything to-day to have the pact 31 months wiped out, and to banish this fear that presses like a cold band over his heard. With childish reiteration ho is always repeating tho cry that he is guiltless of provoking the war; always asking that peace may come, whip realising only too well that peace will onh come "lien his proud legions are smasheef and, if he be alive, despair also possess# his soul. The Kaiser does not know whiri is worse—to die before peace, or to V. alive when the kind of peace in store fa Germany materialises. The Gennan Emperor is an ill-balanced, emotional personality, who one moment is in the seventh heaven of delight, the other moment in the deepest slough of despondency. On such a temperament tho superstitious fear of an untimely end easily obtains a strong hold, particularly as the state of his health gives small assurance of comfortable old ago being reached. —The Old Scourge.— Though little has been said on the subject, it is general gossip, in neutral countries, contiguous to Germany, that thr death of Francis Joseph has been a grea’ -shock to the Kaiser, reminding him that it may be his turn next. The German peace pilot was hs direct inspiration, lie wants peace before he dies, and, that his end may not be a violent one, he wants a German peace. Ho shudders at the thought of joining tho Hohenzollems who have passed, to a chorus of almost universal curses. The Kaiser has aged. He has nob escaped the penalty of his terrible responsibilities. Physical weaknesses hitherto unsuspected have shown themselves. His throat is a perpetual menace to him. The physician who examines him daily is afraid that one day he will find signs of the same scourge that carried off his father, the Emperor Frederick. 'Though the German Emperor is seen here, there, and everywhere, he is to a large extent an Emperor in cotton-wool. Tho soldiers who cheer his arrival at the various fronts may bo cheering his doubk for all they know. Often when the Kaiser is reported on the west or on the east he is at Potsdam with a temperature. Conceive tho mental stress under which he lives. Every hour 130 men die in tho 2,200-miles-long battlefield. Tho war that was to have been over in the first six months has reached its third winter. Thera are victories in plenty for the German people, but little food, and many women are to bo heard sobbing “ Give us back oiu husbands, our sons, our fathers.” No man with any human instinct whatever could look unmoved ou such a picture, and the Kaiser has still some human qualities left But it is easier to start a European wai than it is to stop it; and William 11., with his uneasy conscience and the pain in his throat, needs no telling how far removed peace still is. His restless wanderings bring him neither ease nor for getfulness. Ilindenburg’s messages of victory fail to thrill him. The novelty of victory has worn off, and he doubts with his people whether it is really right to call them victories. “ We want peace.” murmur tho famished Gorman poor. The rich Prussians and th military chiefs, who have plenty to eat prefer to discuss how they' are to dividEurope up. The Kaiser says “ Peaee ” with tlio multitude, but he dare not tell them the conditions of peaee. At present lie trembles for his soul. In the still watches of tho night the spectre of the dead Emperor Francis Joseph, dead before the war tie fashioned had ceased, rises before his troubled vision. —Future Looms Darkly.— When hunger bites vet more shrewdly into the bodies of the German population, and peace, ever tantalisingly dangled before them, still eludes their grasp, the Kaiser will tremble not only for his sou!, but for his crown as well. He will be -i prey to many fears, with the pain in I.is throat always acute enough to suggest the grave. However miserable the German Emperor is to-day, and however heavily the burden of sin and care may weigh upon him, the future looms even mor< darkly. They Bay that Francis Joseph might have lived another 10 years had noi worry hastened his end, and his hard heart was largely proof against any disturbing emotion. Worry is killing the Kaiser. The world has condemned him as being in the main the author of the present war; he couid have prevented it had he wished it. Futile though he knows it to be, he bids tin world judge him differently: “ I didn’t will this war.” What is that a sign of if it is not tho beginning of remorse? But remorse alone would not explain it. There is something else. The Kaiser is afraid to die while this slaughter goes on. Ht who is no ready to proclaim God as ally if -afraid to meet his Maker while the cannoi roar and millions of men torn from usefu energies keep a dread rendezvous witi death. It is the secret all official German; hides—the secret that no man betweei Berlin and Bagdad who values his li£e dart whisper abroad. Thera is peace in the graves of the Hapsburgs this ride of the world', but there ie no peace in the breast of the liv ing Hohenzollorn who wears the Prussia! crown; only a gnawing fear at his heartstrings and a pain in his throat, and in his mind by day a memory of his dead brother-Emperor, with hands lastonim coldly on a golden cross, and in his mind by night a vision of Verdun and the Yser, and Tannenburg and Delville Wood—skulls aud bones everywhere! But no peace!