STUDY OF THE KAISER

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2375, 3 February 1915, Page 6

STUDY OF THE KAISER

" THE ENIGMATIC EMPEROR " A PROPHECY FULFILLED Twenty-three years, ago a striking study of tho Kaiser was published in the Lisbon newspaper, "A Capital," and such was the keenness of insight displayed by the author into tho complex character of the German Emperor that his article is of oven greater interest ill these momentous days than when it first saw the light. It has been republished by tho London "Times," and has been reproduced in dozens of other English newspapers from that source. The writer of the article was Jose Maria Eca de Quieroz, a Portuguese author who won fame in his own country. He had a varied career, and in his later years be was attached to the Portuguese Consular service. At tho time of his death in 1900 he was Portuguese Consul-General iii Paris. His study of the Kaiser was written in 1891, when His Majesty had been three years on the throne. The article opens with a reference to Ernest Renan's regret that death brought for him the only regret that he would be prevented from witnessing the final development of the enigmatic Emperor. "Up to the present, in the first, act, lasting over a period of threo years," states Eca de Quieroz, "by the diversity and the multiplicity of his manifestation, William ll has merely revealed the fact that in liim, as in Hamlet, there exists the germs of various men, and we cannot preconceive which of them will prevail, or whether when one has finally doveloped he wiil amaze us by his greatness or by his triviality." Then follows a recapitulation of the Emperor's activities —the Soldier King, "rigid, stiff, in helmet and cuirass, occupied with nothing but reviews and manoeuvres"; the Reform King, "attending only to questions of capital and wages, eagerly convoking social congresses, claiming the management of all human improvements, and determined to go down in history embracing the proletariat as a brother whom he has set tree" ; the King by Divine Right, "haughtily resting his Gothic sceptre on the backs of his people, subjecting the highest law to the will of the King"; the Courtier King, "worldly, pompous, thinking only of tiie brilliance and sumptuosity of etiquette, regelating festivals and masquerades, ordering the style of head dress to be worn by ladies"; the Modern King, "treating the past as bigoted, regarding the factory as tho supreme temple, dreaming of Germany as worked entirely by electricity." Reference is .made to the various parts played by tho Emperor' in his visits abroad from London to Constantinople.' "The world in perplexity murmurs— Who is this man that changes and multiplies himself so incessantly?" continues Eca de Quieroz. "Thus William II has beconto a contemporary problem—there are theories regarding him as there are regarding magnetism, the influenza, or the planet Mars. Some say he is merely a youth ardently thirsting for newspaper fame, and who,. _ with ail eye to publicity, prepares his impromptus with the spectacular method, art, and patience with which Sarah .Bernhardt prepares her costumes. Others aver that there is in him nothing but an overbalanced fancy, carricd madly along by the impulses of a morbid imagination, and, for the very reason" that ho is an almost omnipotent emperor, he is allowed to exhibit without restraint the disorders of his fancy. Others, again, see in him simply a Hohenzollem, in whom are summed up and in whom flourish ■ with immense parado all the qualities of Caesarism, mysticism, sergeantism, red tapeism, dogmatism, which alternately characterised the successive kings of that most lucky racc of petty lords of Brandenburg. It may be that each one of these theories contains, as is fortunately the case with all theories, a particle of truth. ]t is my opinion, however, that he is nothing but a dilettante of activities —1 mean a man strongly enamoured of activity, comprehending and feeling, with -unusual: intensity, the infinite delight it offers, and desiring, therefore, to experience and enjoy it in every form permissible in our state of civilisation. "This it is that makes the German Emperor so prodigiously interesting a figure. In him we have among us in this philosophical century a man, a mortal who, more than any other expert, prophet or saint, lays claim and appears to be the ally and intimate friend of God. The world has never seen, since the days of Moses on Sinai, such intimacy, such an alliance between the creature and the Creator. The reign of William II seems to be, as it weore, an -unexpected resurrection of the Mosaism of the Pentateuch. He is the favourite of God, he holds conferences with God in the burning bush of Berlin Schloss, and at the instigation of God he is leading his people to the joys of Canaan. Truly he is Moses 11. Like Moses, too, ho never tires of proclaiming (daily and loudly, so that none may ignore it) his spiritual and temporal relationship to God,, which makes him infallible and therefore irresistible. "William Iljuns the awful danger of being cast down the Gemoniae. He boldly takes upon himself the responsibilities which in all nations are divided among various bodies of the State—he alone judges, he alone executes, because to him alone it is (uot to his Ministers, to his Council, or to his Parliament) that God, the God of the Hohenzollerns, imparts His transcendental inspiration. He must, therefore, be infallible and invincible. At the first disaster —whether it be inflicted by hia burghers or by his people in the streets of Berlin, or by. allied armies on tho plains of Europe—Germany will at once .conclude that his much-vaunted alliance with God was the trick of a wily despot. "Then will there not be stones enough from Lorraine to Pomerania to stone this counterfeit Moses. William II is in very truth casting against Fate those terrible "iron dice'' to vhich the now forgotten Bismarck once alluded. If he win he may have within aiid without the frontiers altars such as were raised to Augustus; should ho lose, exile, .■ the traditional exile in England, awaits him—a degraded exile, the exile with which he so sternly' threatens those who deny his infallibility. "31. Renan is therefore quite right; there is nothing more attractive at this period of the century than to witness the'final development of William 11. In the course of years (ma,v God make them slow and lengthyl) this youth, ardent, pleasing, fertile in'imagination, of sincere, perhaps heroic, soul, may be sitting in calm majesty in his Berlin Schloss presiding over the destinies of Europe—or he may be in the Hotel Metropole in London sadly unpacking from his exile's hand bag the battered double crown of Prussia and Germany." "To him nothing is impossible, for he commands 2,000.000 soldiers and a people who seek liberty only in the regions of philosophy, ethics and exegesis, and who, when their Emperor orders tiiem to march, silently obey. And further, to him nothing is impossible, for it is his firm belief that God is on his side, inspiring him and sanctioning his power. "A splendid and insatiable desire to enjoy and experience every form of activity, under the sovereign conviction that' Clod warrants and promotes the ultimate success of his every undertaking, explains, T think, tin? conduct of this mystorhns Emperor. Now, did be rule an empire at the other side of Asia, or did he not possess in tile Julius Tower a war treasure for I,lie maintenance and equipment of 2,000.000 soldiers, or were ho edged rouiul b,v a nublio opinion a 6 ..active. aM^oerciv^j

as that of England, William II would merely be like many other Emperors m history, peculiar from the mobility of his fancy and the illusion, of his ilessianic olfice. But .being unfortunately in tho heart of the workshop of Europe, with hundreds of disciplined legions, with a people formed of citizens disciplined and obedient as soldiers, William II is tho most dangerousoorl r sovereigns, for in his dilettantism he has still to experience the most seductive form of activity that a King can know—war and its glories 1

"It may indeed happen that one day Europe will awake to the roar of clashing armies, only because in th'e soul of this great dilettante the burning desire to 'know war,' to enjoy war, was stronger than reason, counsel or pity lor his subjects. Not long ago, indeed, ho gave this promise to his faithful retainers of Braudenburg:—'l will lead you,' he said, 'to splendid and glorious destinies!' What destinies? Battles, of course, in which the German eagles shall triumph. Wilhaim II has not tho slightest doubt as to the issue, for besides several minor sovereigns he has for his ally the supreme Sovereign of Heaven and Earth fighting among the German Landwehr, as in the days of old when, Minerva, bearing her spear, lought with the Black Phalanx against barbarians! "The certainty of a divine alliance! Truly, nothing can give a man more strength than such a faith, which almost renders him divine. On the other hand, to what risks it exposes hinil Nothing can make the fall of a man more disastrous than the proof, borne out by the crude contradiction of facts, that such a certainty was but the chimera of a mad infatuation."