THE EX-KAISER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20384, 12 October 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE EX-KAISER.

YOUNG GERMANY'S VIEWS.

BY N. T. SIXCLAIIt.

There was tho usual hum of boarding table conversation as we entered. I had boon thoro before—to this student pon-, sion in tho Oppenheimer Strasse—and know • enough to bow stiffly from tho waist and mutter my surname to such as I had not met before. As wo took our scats, with the customary greeting of ' Mahl'zeit" to our immediate neighbours, thero was a hush. One of tho students was on his feet—close-cropped, square, aggressive head, faco flushed with excitement anri wine, two hideouslv-dis-figuring scars, the blue and yellow sash of some student guild. He was obviously drunk and very young. Ho glowered at us •o be still.

' And so, gentlemen," he declaimed, ' 1 ask you to picture him there, that lr inely man yonder, mourning for his faith .ess people. Guiltless himself, his one aim ever Germany's welfare, but harried into exilo by that scum" (ho fairly spat tho word, " Kanaillo"), who stabbed us in tho back when we had all but won the war." (Tho speaker was barely nineteen.) " 1 ask you, then, to couple these two toasts: 'To hell with all Socialists, and—' es I oho lioch der Kaiser —long live the Kaiser—hoch !' "

An unwise speech at best, I thought; for in these days, when maybe half of Germany is Socialist, Monarchists, though noisy, arc the exception rather than the rule—apparently, though, he knew his audience Thero was a scraping of chairs, tho snap of militarily-clicked heels, the think of glasses. They were all very young, a little maudlin, ebulliently patriot ic, and there had been that day a parado of the Stahl-Helm, the army (purely 11011 military, of course) of the ultra-monarch ist diohards.

As an Englishman I was in no slight dilemma and I looked to Ilatzfeld for a lead university lecturer, liko all such in all lands, poorly pain ; hence a Socialist, maybo a thinker, certainly. Not, entirely to my surprise, ho mado no movo to rise, but offered 1110 the sauer kraut arid potatoes that pave the way for prunes and rice in such establishments. Our student friends had linked arms meanwhile, and were obviously expecting Ilatzfeld to join them in tho toast and kiss of brotherhood. The spokesman could hardly contain his impatience. " May I ask, mcin herr, if you are joining us. or not, in a health to our Kaiser, whom Germany so basely deserted Deserter. Ilatzfeld turned to him, and dispassionately, like a true pedagogue, he said. " YOll will permit me to observe that, in any reference to desertion, there is sonio slight inconsistency. A monarch who turns tail and flies at tho first sign of danger to his skin can hardly complain of desertion on the part of his subjects. At least, lie might have shown some slight trust in that God to Whose grace it. was iiis daily boast that he owed his throne. Desertion there may have been, but itwas not on the part of the German people, who had bled themselves white in his defence, and would have resisted to the last man any attempt to make him suffer for the sins of all." His words had some effect. A few of those standing looked uneasy, and mado t.o sit down. But the spokesman, with an oath, turned his back 011 us. and, raising high his glass, ho drained it at one draught Whereupon tho others, somewhat sheepishly followed suit and sat down.

It was only when tliey had gone that Hatzfeld made any further reference to tlio incident. " Young fools," lie said. (Momentarily I remembered (he expression. League of Foolish Youth.) " It's iliey and their like that are breaking up the unity of the Fatherland, and undoing all the good of (he past ten years. It's true what L said, you know. The Kaiser fled to Holland because in his inmost heart he never really believed in tho God Whoso name ho had always oil his lips. If he had believed lie would have stayed, and we would have fought for him, every man of us, to the death. We would have rallied round him. built up a new Germany, purged and chastened, and without the pangs of travail that this ineta morphosis into a republic has cost. us. For wo are not by- genius republican. Never Really Trusted Others.

" You English—it was Lloyd George's idea, wasn't it ?—you spoke a great, deal of hanging the Kaiser. You couldn't have done it. You know now that you couldn't have, and still remain a civilised nation. The Kaiser knows it, too, now that it's 100 late. But ho didn't wait to sec. 110 didn't trust, not one iota, in his much-vaunted God, any more than ho ever really trusted Germany. We see now tho reason for his huge bodyguard, his retinue of servants, his entirely Prussian entourage, his mediaeval isolation in machine-gun-guardcd fortresses. 110 never really trusted us.

" You, a foreigner, can have no conception of the effect such a realisation had 011 us. Our war blows, tho collapse «>f Turkey, Bulgaria, Austria, were as nothing to it. Despite them, Germany remained, unimpaired, vitally tho same, an entity. But even the most loyal German in those last days of the war was overwhelmed by tho news of tho flight to Holland—tlio secret journey, they call it now, forsooth. " It was as if the world had ceased to exist. It was as if some vital thing in us had snapped—something intangible that knit all Germany together. Whatever their faults, Germany, modern Germany, was tho handiwork of theso Hohenzollerns. If we were a mighty nation, a prosperous and a rising nation, it was to tlicm wo owed it. They wero proud, they wero arrogant, cold and unyielding as steel, but. wo thought, with all the qualities of steel. They wero part and parcel of the very being of Germany, and in them wo had implicit faith. That this faith was not returned, that thoy abandoned us in our direst extremity, left us in a state of cold despair. " And now we can never forget. Our eyes have been opened. They arc as a dead thing to us. And, if need be, we'll fight against them, just as wo did fight, and would have gono on fighting, for them. Points of View. " Thai, unfortunately, is but one point of view. It is my point of view, and that of the majority of ex-servicemen who do not wish lo see a Colossal blunder repeated. It is not (ho point of view of ilio Prussian, in whom loyalty to the Hohenzollern is a virtue that exceeds—some would have it, excludos—all other virtues. Loyalty unthinking, unquestioning, but not unprofitable. It will never again bo so profitable to be a Prussian unloss tho Hohenzollerns return. And they know it. " It is not the point of view of the ruined aristocrat, who sees in a restoration his one chance of redeeming his fortunes, nor of the professional soldier s family that counts everything in terms of military accomplishment. Above all it. is not the ]joint of view of youth, of children. such as you saw just now. " Yet who can blame them ? They cannot know. They look around them and seo Germany shorn of her possessions, her army and navy negligible, a foreign invader withdrawing reluctantly after eleven years, a Polish corridor that makes thoni writh'o with indignation. Small wonder that they take tho Kaiser as type of ali the glory that has gono, and see, many of them, no hope of redress, savo in tho German sword."