SLEEPLESS KAISER WILHELM.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 4, 15 January 1915, Page 4 (Supplement)

SLEEPLESS KAISER WILHELM.

VICTIM OF INSOMNIA, HE APES

NAPOLEON

"WILL HE EMULATE MACBETH?

BLEEDING PHANTOMS.

(This remarkable article, by far the most scathing indictment of th e Kaiser yet, appeared in "1-e Journal," and '.s from the jk-u of out- of France's most [K>pular '\rr;lrr< —Jean Richepin, tiio L'oet of tlio People.)

"THE EMPEROR WILLIAM CANNOT SLEEP."

Y'ou have read this simple scrap of news —simple, but big with meaning, "fis worthy to be set, in capitals. ns a cockade, amid the* mass of intelligence more go more. It is in vain—so runs the news —that his officers prepare the Royal couch far from the noise of cannon and the rest-de.-troying searchlight; the Kaiser if seized with insomnia. He betrays lassitude an-cl profound moral depression Bo passes his nights in sleeplessness. We know already how he spends sonio of them. Sometimes he appears liko an apparition before the broken remnants of his Guard, his only living hand thrust in his bosom —trying to create for them —and for himself —the illusion that be is the modern Xapolecn. Sometimes he flees distractedly ft'om place to place in the Royal train—no longer blue and white, but bearing shamelessly the Red Cross. Yes. shamelessly; sinco he would thus elude tho aviator's bombs, as if lie were a wounded hero instead of a weak and abominable dastard.

But apart from those mountebank displays, how spends he these interminable, wakeful nigh Up With what thoughts, what regrets, what premonitions. aro his sleepless nightmares peopled? What bleeding phantoms rise before him, tliis Kaiser who cannot sleep ?

Has lie remorse alone, this madman who has seduced a people, sent mad his troops, inflamed his pack of brutes and beasts, incendiaries, butciiens of old men and little children, rippers and ravishers of women? Does ho know that he is worse than Vamerliaine, and Gongi'S-Khan, ; and Atilla? Does he realise that his name, more justly than theirs, will I* held in execration by the whole human species ? But stay. Is not the real cause of his insomnia fear, unholy fear—that and nothing more? Fear; as witness his absence from tho field ,of battle; af wi|neas the .shameless subterfuge c-1 painted coaches; as witness the couch far from cannon's roar and searchlight's insolence. The brutes and beasts unloosed to satisfy his folly, they at least got themselves killed, and his soldiers at the front—ou.r little redcoats know something about that. But it is never at the front that one sees him ; 'tis always away down there at th? back, playing. and 'tripping now here, now there —and trying to sleep! When will he emulate Macbeth, who, craven at the first, resolved at last to die a warrior and a man.

"Ring tho alarum-bell! Blow, wind! Come wrack! At least we'll die with harness on our back."

One lis'tens vainly for the words. Ho knows them, surely, this pinchbeck artist, this lettered Kaiser. Why doe* he not speak th-.'m? . . . Play, then, to the end, if thou wilt, thy role of Imperial artist; yCt- not as the modern Napoleon that thou art not, but as th o modern Nero that thou art. No. No. Th-ou can-it not. struggle through the lines to that burst- of valiant despair, thou tyrant-scoundrel driven bactc to ruin. Thou stoppitet at the passage where, hoarse and quaking, the murderer cries :

"But wherefore could not I pronounce 'Amen' ? I had most need of blessing, and 'Amen' Stuck in my throat. . . Met bought I heard a voice cry, 'Sleep no more! Macbeth dotii murder shop.' . . . Still it cried, 'Sleep no more I I to a!) th 0 house."

And. substituting thy names for his, thou wilt crv for ever:

"William hath TnuwWed sleep, and therefore HohenzoUern Shall sleep no more; William shall sleon 110 more."

Mayest thou repent them to thy life's-end. 0 madman fallen into dotage; afd then again, from the bottom of thy tomb; and even there sleep no more—-nevei ! —never! And may that pardon-craving word, Amen, stick 111 thy throat for aye!