The Rangitikei Advocate. TWO EDITIONS DAILY. TUESDAY, MAY 7, 1918. THE KAISER'S OBSESSION.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLII, Issue 11531, 7 May 1918, Page 4

The Rangitikei Advocate. TWO EDITIONS DAILY. TUESDAY, MAY 7, 1918. THE KAISER'S OBSESSION.

THROUGHOUT THE whole war a great deal of strain has been placed upon our credence regarding certain alleged accidents and diseases which have overtaken the Kaiser and male members of his family. How many times the Crown Prince has suffered death it is hardly worth while .to definitely recall. On all these occasions he has demonstrated his existence by burglarising some great French mansion of furniture, tapestry, or wines which excited his criminal cupidity. Several other members of the family have also exceeded the allowance of the cat in the number of their lives, and in

imagination we have often seen the Court physcian shaking his head sadly over the possibilities of the Kaiser's early demise. If it were possible to harrow our feelings with the tales of disasters to the Kaiser and his brood, however, it would have been so much good sentiment wasted. Their continued immunity from wounds and bodily ills generally is probably ona of the incst convincing proofs that history

has ever furnished of the truth of the old proverb that tho Devil takes great care of his own. That and a most careful avoidance of the range of the big guna has made them excellent lives from an insurance agent's point of view, whatever they may be from that of any other standooint.

It needs, however, no spscial stretch of imagination to believe tne latest report as to the obsession of whicb/the "Kaiser ia now £said to Have made himself the victim. It is stated that he believes himself equal with God, and sometimes, that he actually is tho Deity. Wa may, indeed, regard it as tne inevitable sequel and result of tho impious presumption of which he has been guilty for many years past of announcing himself as iu a very special sense the anointed of God, a relationship, which it may be remembered, he has never extended to the other crowned heads ot\Europe, Even in times of peace he never formulated the claim as being applicable to nil Royalty, but as peculiar'to himself. From that, therefore, it was a natural and inevitable development in the overthrow of a never very stable mentality that, during the war he should imagine himself, as he has more than once proclaimed, to be the chosen agent for the chastisement and the subsequent healing of the world. Froni.that'again it was just as natural that the courso of his unholy obsession should land him whero lie is psychically said to bo- In fact any clever psychologist, without any aid from prophecy, assuming the existence of conditions which have actually occurred in Europe, could have predicted insanity for William long before the war. Ho could have deduced it from tiie known laws of human mentality. Ha could ' have predicted it with the certainty and accuracy that tho astronomer foretells an eclipse.

The asylums of the "world are, in fact, full of tho self-induced insane. Leaving out the minority who have lest their reasons-owing to physical injury, or malformation or disease of the brain, *it may probably be assumed that the great majority have rendered themselves insane by the continual cherishing of a single idea. Itmay.be grief. It may be fear of some'particular kind, it may be hatred or unbounded personal vanity. Whatever it may be it gradually bfcomes an obsession that sweeps out the sane individuality, and occupies the man as evil spirits were supposed to do in old times. Perhaps the statement that the insanity of tho great majority of the mentally diseased is a sfif-iuduced state is subject to qualification of some kind, but we know of uono, and the fact that it is so, or apparently so, should be a warning to all not to allow a single idea to commence a domination of the mind so that in time it becomes a demon in

possession. ? | It is held that the belief that man has a dual mental nature has passed beyond the scope of empiricism and become a scientific fact. It is asserted by psychologists that we have objective and subjective minds—the objective being what may bo designated the work-a-day intellect, which lias its seat in the folds of the bruin, and the subjective which is lsteent and passive while the objective mind maintains its mastery, but which stores all impressions and forgets nothing. In the case of persons in perfect mental health afstate of stable equilibrium exists between the two. Any weakening of the objective mind brings the subjective into relative control, and the result ia obsession or absolute insanity. The idea is too crudely and briefly expressed here to be convincing. But the well known fact that a person may be mnde actually ill by repeated assurances that he looks ill is often quoted as a proof of the facility with which the subjective mind can he made to receive suggestions. If, therefore, the Kaiser hud been able to retain his sanity amid the blasphemous and sychopluaiticj flattery to which he lias listened from dignitaries of the church and the pandering of the : press it would need to have been : fixed more firmly upon its foundations than it ever has been. And unfortunately the world has had to pay the pi'ice of his obsession in oceans of blood and tears. Plain John Brown, who bogi«3 with an overvvelming conceit of himself, and presently becomes mad on the notion that he is Alexander the Great, is shut up in an>S3'lum fas tho rosult of auto-suggestion. The Kaiser, however, placed in tho high circle in which the fates of nations aro decided, having by external "and inner suggestion, brought himself to believe that he is the Deity, is craned loose like the Devil, and bathes the world' in blood.