THE INVINCIBLE KAISER.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLII, Issue 12823, 15 April 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE INVINCIBLE KAISER.

The "Tagliche Rundschan"' publishes ;■ remarkable article, contrasting th.Kaiser's omnipresence and constant, appearances in public before the war with his almost complete invisibility during th. past eighteen months. In nothing, we air told, has he more surprised his contemporaries. His enemies' thought that, -iu accordance with their conception of him.. he would constantly seek the limelight. and poee as the effective leader of Germany at war. But nothing of the sort libhappened. He has become invisible, we are told. not alone to his enemies. Even German?--never see him. In olden days he wa< present on -every festal occasion in every corner of the Empire. Nov.; no one' know* whether he- is at the Eastern or the West- : ern headquarters. We only hear about His presence in a place after he bas left it. Sometimes he comes to Berlin, but whei; be arrives, when he departs, or in what palace lie lodges no one knows. -When the five-hundredth anniversary of Hoheo/.oilem rule was quietly' celebrated, in keeping with the gravity of the times, the Kaiser came to Berlin. But it was only after he left. Berlin that. the news wa.makle known. What enemies and neutral.-. may think about the "Invisible Kaiser.' what they may sav about him, is, we ar---assured, an "indifferent German matter. Germans, says the writer in the "Rundschau," are accustomed to the notion of an invisible leader. . There was Kai=er Karl in the. Untersberg. Barbarossa in Kyffhauser,. Heinrich in the Sudernerberg. And away back in mythology there v,er<Wittekind and . Wodan, leaders, all of them, invisible. And' Germany's relation ■to the Kaiser is the relation of a nation which feels his power but does not seewhence the power comes. We are also to "believe that something; great always happens after one of tluKaiser's appearances at the front, antf that because he is invisible to ordinary mortals at home he reveals himself to those who know him well and do his will.

Finally, the "Rondschau" reminds us that the Kaiser is not the only invisible power iirthis war. There is the gr<*y army, the submarines, the mine .war under' the earth. which look like a piece of forest—all of them wear an invisible capThe'can'of the Kaiser resembles that helmet lent hy Pluto to Perseus when the> hero went forth .in quest.' of Medusa's head.