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Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 160, 12 August 1914, Page 6

The Kaiser has in his time been called by a lot of hard names, but the one lately applied to him by a New Yorlc journal, which described him as a "pious humbug," seems to be the most appropriate yet devised. Wilhelm's most recent declarations and invocations emphasise the discernment of the American journalist. For instance, the Kaiser, while feeding his citizens at home with garbled stories of the German campaign in Belgium, called on all good Teutons to remember the nation's glorious* part. What part ? The part of the breaker of treaties, of intimidating the weak, of disturbing the "constitutional equipoise" of Europe and the'world's peace? The Kaiser paints for the hotheads in the Fatherland an unoffending Germany, clad in humility and all righteousness, beset by enemies who strike in the dark. He quotes Shakespeare to drive home an appeal for the country, and generally plays his accustomed role with eminent distinction. Almost up to the day this international debacle was precipitated, he passed the word of fraternity across the North Sea, but all the time his armourers worked day and night to construct weapons of offence, which were to be used when the time suited to tyrannise the Continent. Belli ml all the Kaiser's show of strong resignation is, as all the world but the German masses knows, the determination to aggrandise the Hohenzollern House beyond all others. This spirit has impelled Germany to wring a grinding taxation from the people, who are brought up in the belief that their ruler is divinely inspired. The Kaiser, the "Admiral of the Atlantic," the representative on earth of Providence — to give some of his aliases —plays up to this belief most admirably. He is most pious when he contemplates his most arrogant interventions. He calls on Heaven, and when the eyes of the devoted populace follow his cry, he winks (figuratively speaking) at the head of the War Oiiice. Heaven itself, he suggests, is on the side of his .multitudinous

battalions. As Germany stands facing a. resentful world, the Kaiser will have this theory thoroughly»tested in the near future.