WHY EX-KAISER REFUSED TO BE TRIED.
A LETTER TO HINDENBURG ON WAR GUILT. The “Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitnng” published recently some correspondence that passed between the ex-Kaiser and Marshal von Hindenburg earlier in the year. On March 30th, it, says, Hindcnburg wrote to the ex-Kaiser, stating that the question of war guilt, enforced from Germany’s representative at Versailles, and again from Dr. Simons, the Foreign Minister, at the London conference in March, formed a pivot of the German people’s future. Replying on April sth, the exKaiser, after explaining that he left the country hoping thereby that Germany would get a favourable armistice, and avert civil war, continues :
, “Whoever does not close his eyes to it against his better knowledge must acknowledge that during my 2G years’ reign before the war German foreign policy was directed purely towards the maintenance of peace. Had we had warlike aims we should have struck in 1900, when Great Britain was involved in the Boer War, or in 1905, when Russia was engaged against Japan, but certainly not in 1914, when an overwhelming superiority was arrayed against us. “God is my witness that to avert the war I went to the utmost limit for which I could make myself Responsible. To talk of Germany s guilt, for the war is out of the question. There is no longer any doubt that not Germany, but the Entente, methodically prepared for the war, and deliberately brought it about. In order to throw a veil over this procedure, the Entente enforced in the shameful Treaty of Peace an unjrue acknowledgment of Germany’s guilt, and demanded my trial before a hostile tribunal.
“You, dear Field-Marshal, know me too well not to know that there is no sacrifice for the Fatherland which is too great for me, but a tribunal in which the Entente would be at the same time plaintiff and Judge would be not an organ of justice, but an instrument of political arbitrariness, and would .only serve Jbrough my prearranged condemnation to justify post factum the unheard of peace conditions imposed upon us. Naturally such a demand on the part of the enemy could only be refused by me.
“But neither can there be for me any question of my appearance before a neutral tribunal, 'however constituted. In the matter of the directions which, as Emperor and King, as' the constitutionally- nunresponsible representative of the German nation, I gave to the best of my knowledge and good conscience. 1 recognise the penal jurisdiction of no earthly judge, however highly placed he may be. I would not in such fashion surrender the honour and dignity of the German people represented by me. ... “A real clearing-up of the guilt question, in which Germany would certainly have no less interest than her enemies, can only be effected provided it is done by an international and impartial tribunal which shall noj judge as criminals single personalities, but shall establish all those proceedings which led to the world war in order that it may thus rightly measure the guilt of the. Powers concerned.”
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Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2398, 28 February 1922, Page 4
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510WHY EX-KAISER REFUSED TO BE TRIED. Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2398, 28 February 1922, Page 4
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