IS THE KAISER MAD ?

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXIX, Issue 3942, 10 July 1918, Page 2

IS THE KAISER MAD ?

THE JUDGMENT OF THOSE WHO

KNEW HIM OF OLD

Is the Kaiser mad—scientifically mad ? Bismarck himself was convinced that Wilhelm was-crazy. The Iron Chancellor knew the Kaiser from his childhood, and knew the secret family history and family maladies of the Hohenzollerns. Some time before his death, Bismarck confided to his friend Felix Dahn, distinguished German historian and lawyer, that the Kaiser was a lunatic. He intimated that he might have to be locked up. "If the worst comes to the worst," said Bismarck, "and it should become necessary to put him under restraint, my •successor will have a more difficult task than would have fallen to my lot. For I feel sure the German people would have trusted me."

The Kaiser is endowed with the super-human cunning that has characterised many of the famous paranoiacs and epileptics who have been world leaders. If Bismarck pierced the veil and discovered his lunacy^ many have failed to do so. Another German Chancellor, Prince Hohenlohe, did not believe that the Kaiser was even a religious monomaniac. s He stated to an international journalist shortly before leaving the Chancellorship his belief that he was an arch hypocrite—an atheist like Frederick the Great. Hohenlohe said : "Far from Being the sincerely religious man which human stupidity has credited him with Being, he is the coolest rationalist, the greatest egotist, and the most ungrateful person I ever came across." But the alienists say the exaggerated characteristics mentioned by Hohenlohe are further symptoms of paranoia. Another German Chancellor, yon Bulow, who had so much trouble with the Kaiser because of his habit of "butting in" on diplomatic situations with personal telegrams like the famous Kruger dispatch—a dispatch which almost brought Britain and Germany to blows in the 90s—gave a hint in the Reichstag that he was irresponsible. When Bulow was being attacked for allowing the Kaiser to permit so many dangerous indiscretions, he said : "If you only knew what I prevent." And the revelation of the "Willy-Nicky" correspondence gives an idea of what yon Bulow was talking about.

The late Pope Leo XIII. was one of the great world figures who came into contact with the Kaiser when he was a young man. The Holy Father's estimate of him is perhaps the most interesting of all. Here it is : "This young man is obstinate and vain, and it is to be feared that his reign will terminate in disaster." This remark of the pontiff's was revealed long after his death by one of his close counsellors.