THE KAISER’S BOMBAST.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 7917, 11 August 1917, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE KAISER’S BOMBAST.

Presumably the German Emperor gave utterance to the sentiments contained in the war anniversary proclamations with which his name is officially associated, and the substance of which appeared in our cable news of yesterday. If so, then his declaration that “we are not frightened by new nations continuing tc enter the war against us” — evidently a contemptuous allusion to the entry of the United States —bears a family likeness to his early remarks concerning the “contemptible British Army.” After the way in which Germany has been compelled to swallow that bombastic phrase, it might be supposed that even the Kaiser would realise the wisdom of refraining from committing a similar folly in regard to th.o military effort of the people ot America. As a contemporary writer lias put it, it is difficult to see what Germany can hope to gain by thus deliberately under-estimating the strength of her enemies, or at least by leading, her people into a false conception of the position. The rude awakening which his people must have experienced since the German Emperor’s contemptuous remarks regarding the British will be realised when we read the following extract from on exchanged British officer’s book, “ Wounded and a Prisoner of War,” in which he refers to his experiences while on his way to Germany as a prisoner at the end of 1914. “The prevailing sentiment towards England was contemptuous. I remember some soldiers at one place reading the news to my sentry out of a German paper, and one of the items was: ‘Kitchener has organised an army of one million men.’ This statement caused considerable laughter, and when the sentry returned to our carriage I asked him where the joke lay. England, he then explained, for years had employed a small number of paid men to do whatever fighting was needed, and the nation could not now be drilled and made soldiers of, as they were not animated by the martial, manly spirit of Germany, and those few that did volunteer —he used the word with contempt — would require at least a year’s training.” The prospect at that time ef another year of war was even less real to tbe enemy than it is to-day. and with the knowledge that Great Britain is playing a decisive part in the war, the people will find it difficult to draw consplat m from the German Emperor’s slighting references to American intervention.