THE KAISER AS A CACKLER.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11217, 24 October 1914, Page 7

THE KAISER AS A CACKLER.

(By HARRY BKSWICK, in the " Clarion.") Tt was Mr Sleary, the circus proprietor in " Hard Times," who confessed that he was not " ninth of a cackler ; the owner of the PoLsdain Jllood_ lull, on tho other hand, is proud of his oratorial skill and prolixity. He revels in his Ciceronian glory. I have just completed the perusal ol a volume of Kaiser Wilhelm's speeches —-speeches on a. variety of topics, lrom (von might say) pitch-arid-toss (or sport) to manslaughter (or AVarJ, and in each oration the cloven hoof of an uncircvuinscribed egotism is displayed an egotism which inspired. His Omni potency to write of himself (if we arc to accept the unsullied word of John Kondrick Bangs): Oil Me! Oh My I! And likewise II!! Sit still, my curls, whilo I orate Me, I, Myself, The- Throne, The State, I am the earth, the moon, the sun All rolled in one I Both hemispheres am I. Oh My! If there were three, tho Tlitco I'd be. The most remarkable thing about Wilhelm's- speeches is an inferential claim to partnership with the Most High, which would be positively blasphemous were it not for its plain and manifest sincerity. "Our old God" (unserein alten"Got't), ho quotes patronisingly in his speech to the Wcstphalian troops. Really and truly, Wilhelm believes himself to be a not too humble or too junior partner in a Celestial Trust: the Powers Divine are his coadjutors. Make no mistake; that is his rapturous belief. Listen to him haranguing the sailors on board the Hohenzollen, off Heligoland, July 29, 1910: Yes, God livcth as of old. Our great Ally still reignetih, tho Holy God who cannot suffer sin and iniquity to_ triumph. He will lead His holy cause 4igainst an unholy nation. The Almighty God who can smito through the strongest, walls as through gossamer, who can scatter like a of sancl tho mightiest armies, the merciful true God who ill His Father's heart bears tho joys and sorrows of His children, who liears every.sigh and sympathises with every sorrow. Pious prayer opens His Fatherly hand, and is filled with blessings. Simple critics are filled with wonderment that a man of such apparent piety could acquiesce in the spoliation of Belgium, the destruction of beautiful Louvain, the shooting of harmless peasants, the murder and rapine by uhlans. But the Kaiser's piety belongs to the Old Testament; the God he invokes is our homicidal friend, Jalnveh; and, besides, Wilhelm has no sense of humour. , On New Year's Day, 1900—the better the day the better the, address—the Kaiser spoke to his assembled officers at a camp service in the • Arsenal at Berlin as follows: — The Srst day of the new century (it wasn't, by the way) sees our Army—that is to say, our nation in arms —gathered round its regimental colours, kneeling before the Lord of Hosts. He referred to the days when his great-grandfather gave the army form and life and fresh laurels: , His spirit inspired the tanks of _ his Army, just -as his trust in God spurred it on to unexampled victories. ... And as my grandfather did ife for his land army, so, too, will I for my Navy in the same manner, without faltering continue and carry through the work of reorganisation, so that it, too, may be able to stand ■ with equal authority at the. side of my combative force on land, and that by its means. the._ German Empire may be in a position to win -also abroad a place it has never yet attained. With both combined, I hope to be able, with firm confidence on God's guidance, to realise the truth of the saying of Frederick Wi'liam I.: "If one will decide anything in the world, the pen will not do it unless it ie sustained by the power of the sword." There you are: "the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.'" Heaven is to enjoy his Majesty's continued favour so long as Heaven remembers its obligations and trains its hosts to come at the Imperial call. Visiting Krupp's works in June, 1890, he invoked God's blessings " oil this house," and he promised the assembled employees that he would safeguard the general well-being of the nation and the principles of equitable justice against the conflicting interests of the various sections of the community. He vowed he would "foster among the people the feeling of contentment and of unity by mitigating present economic or social contrasts." How well he kept this promise will be gathered when it is known that at the beginning of this year there were 90,000 unemployed in Berlin. On November 16, 1897, the oath of allegiance was administered to the recruits of the Potsdam garrison. His Imperial Pecksniffiency addressed these youthful warriors in the following terms: He who is no good Christian is no good man. and also no Prussian soldier in the Prussian Army. Your duty is not light. It demands of you self-discipline and selfdenial, the two highest qualities of the Christian; also absolute obedience and submission to the will of your superiors. The high qualities of the Christian Prussian soldiers have led them in this year of grace to burn old men alive and to outrage young girls. The Kaiser's idea of Christianity, indeed, has caused his self-disciplined troops to run amok in Louvain and shoot inoffensive Christian priests. " Outside the ruins of one hotel—the Metropole—l saw the bodies of five Belgians lying in the street," declares an eye-witness- "Two or three had been shot and others had bayonet wounds. The hotel had been fired by the Germans.'* When the Kaiser christened an ironclad—he has been godfather to quite a number of the skulkers in the Kiel Canal—he let himself go in the kind of rhetoric made unpopular by the Second Readers of our schoolboy days. This sort of thing: Glide down into thy element; be thoxi ever -a faithful warden of the seas; be thou ever a fai'Jhful custodian of the honour of our nation—the honour of the flag. And if ever the day comes when thou art called upon to do battle, deal destruction and devastation in the ranks of thy enemies. On some occasions—as before the launching of the Heimdall at Kiel, July, 1892 —ho would speak as freely of Walhalla and of pagan gods as of Jehovah and Christ. For a taste: As the god whon danger was afoot blew a far-sounding horn and summoned tho gods of battlo in the twilight of the gods, and by his horn scattered confusion and destruction among the ranks of his enemies, so may it be with thee. Listen to him in the piilpit pouring out homiloctical platitudes like a cracked rant-or at a revivalist orgy. At Bethlehem in October, 1898, he said: The world-renewing power of tho Gospel, which went forth from this place, urges us to follow its teaching. It exhorts us to look up with tho eye of faith to Him who died for us upon tho Cross, to Christian resignation, to tho practice of unselfish lovo for all men, and it gives us a sure promse that if wo faithfully ho.d fast to tho puro doclrino of the Gospel, even the gates of Hel lshall not prevail against our Evangelical Church.

It would be interesting to know what "our Evangelical Church" thinks of this extract from a letter from t'wo English ladies, written a week or so ago: Between Palis and Dieppe we again stopped at stations where nurses were waiting tho arrival of the French, English and Belgian wounded. We tia.ked with women nurses who told us (as women) of atrocities committed on Belgian women while German soldiers stood by and laughed. These women were then being nursed by those v;ho spoko to IX3. Wo asked, as all were asking, what reason tho German soldiers gave for behaving with this brutality. A woman nurso told us that tho Germans sho had nursed said they had only obeyed orders. They had been told to commit all possible atrocities so to terrorise Franco and England that they would suo for peace.

Tho Kaiser wound up one of his long sermons with:

Some day history will describe tho struggles of those times. But man sees only that which is before his eyes • he can

only say what tho wisdom of his leader*, tlio courage of troops, tho sharpness ot weapons have accomplished. But torao day Eternity will rcvenl yet more. li will show how tho secret prayers of the faithful were a mighty power in these conflicts, how once again tho old promise was fullillcd: "Call unto Mo in the hour of need, and I will rescue thee.'' And therefore be steadfast in prayer. Amen. And here is another pretty passage: Christian men, in order that our brothers yonder may keep cheerful hearts even in the hour of mose pressing need . . . prayer is the golden key to tho treasure hoiiao of God, and lie who has it has also the promise: " Whosoever asks, he shall receive." Or shall we perchance lay our hands idly in our bosoms? Woe unto U3 if we are slothful and remiss while they are plying titoir hard and bloody handiwork. . . . Thaft would be tho spirit of Cain with his cruel words, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Either the Kaiser is tho champion hypocrite of the ages or a criminal lunatic, whose record of blood transcends that of the. Imperial fiddler of Home. Anyhow, it is tho task of civilisation to disarm and put him where

he can do no further mischief. A tremendous task, but it has got to be done. It must bo done. GOT VERY WEAK. "Mv boy Jack was very bad with Diarrhoea;" writes Mrs M. Lee, Forbes, N.S.W. " For quite a fortnight he was ill and got very weak. My husband bought a bottle of Chamberlain's Colic and Diarrhoea Remedy and to our surprise one dose completely relieved him." XI