IF GERMANY WINS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 110, 19 November 1915, Page 2 (Supplement)

IF GERMANY WINS.

THE PESSIMIST'S CHANCE,

KAISER'S STRENUOUS LIFE

MANY PARTS TO PLAY

(From the "Sydney Sun.")

Henry Maloue reminds civilisation that oven if Germany wins tho war the Kaiser will have to lace an ordeal which will tax all Ins resources of accumulated versality and draw seriously on his reserve fund of egotism.

Those lachrymose persons whom our English friends call the Pessimists have been having a perfect orgy of late. The retreat of tho Russians in Poland hue provided them with the same joy which gladens the slum lady at a funeral. They have been able to weep to their hearts' content, securing an accelerated flow of tears when news came through of Bulgaria having worked tho double-cross and decided to commit suicide on the altar of Kaiserism. The pessimist is one of those persons so destitute of imagination that it never occurs to lum to think how the enemy is feeling. He has forgotten the old story of the battered youngster who returned home proudly with a black eye, a torn ear, and a bleeding nose, to inform his anxious father that he ought to see the other fellow. He has forgotten all about a collection of vessels oncj known as Von Spee's squadron. The official announcement that sixty odd Gorman submarines have been accounted for by the British Navy is one of the dim traditions of the past, desp.te the fact that it was made oniv a week or two ago. The fact that a worrisome little craft called the Emden no longer scouts around tho Indian Ocean has been lost to sight, and is not even to memory dear. The pessimist is convinced that Germany must win, just as he is convinced every three years that the result of the general election, no matter which side triumphs, means tr» dead finish of overything. PESSIMISM A NEW ENGLISH CULT. W : o are very used to tho pessimism in Australia. Ho is something new to England, and therefore ho attracts more attention there than in the dominions beyond the seas. There are no droughts in England. That country is eo well founded, and things are so well distributed that he doesn't get the chances to display his magnificent jeremiads as he does in the Commonwealth of Australia. In he is a sporadic complaint; hoio ho is endemic. Jwery time the rainfall curve sag? over one part of the comment, our pessimist can be heard arguing thai Australia is a lanu unfit for human occupat.on. livery time toe output oi goid decreases over the corresponding period ot tho previous year, tuo pessimist is there with Ins assertion that the country is going to the devil. It the cost ot living goes up, he tells everybody that luo is not worth living; 1 it goes down, ho is equally loud about the depression in trade which makes industries not worth the trouble of carrying on. And just now the pessimist is convinced that Germany is going to win-hands down, with the Al\ies following up the straight fairly "blown, and the books calling, "1 pay William," with their customary aplomb wd urbanity. It seems a great pity to disappoint the pessimist, Out it would be just us well to consider what William will have to laoe if his brave boys should happen to make simultaneous triumphal marches into Petrograd and Pans and London, with the warships which used to belong* to England all drawn up along tho Thames proudly flying the red, white, and black, and their massed bands playing Deutschland Iber Alios. The pessimist must not forget what William the victor has before him in order to carry out his ideals. He has many parts to play. In times of peace, he was the only man known to anthropologists who ever commanded both sides of an army on the 6ame day, wrote a play in the afternoon, and produced a ballet in the evening. As a lightning change artist William Hohenzollern las William Holman in the amatour division. And that record was achieved without any 6uch inspiration as would arise from the conquest of the leading countries of Europe—something calculated to impel him to get busy, and make all previous efforts look like the indolent movements of tho day labour man on a contract under the present New bouth Wales Government.

WORK BEFORE WILLIAM. When William and his bnave ami chivalrous lads have cleaned up the belligerents and subdued the Bulgarians for aekinrf that their scrap o» paper should be honoured and disposed of the pretentious demands of the Austrians to retain their own nationality and adequately rebuked the unspeakable Turk* for daring to address the German officers and gentlemen ou terms of equality, there will still Ingood work to do. There is Spain, for instance. Spnm 6tood still right through the most moinontous war ever staged, without offering to lend a hand to the splendid troops of H:s Immaculate Majesty, William. Such treachery naturally will deserve resentment, and Spain will be given its deserts. Then there is -Holland. Holland's actions during the war have been particularly detestable. Did it not welcome the pestiferous Betgians, whoso atrocious couduct towards the brave Germans has mado them hated throughout tho wholo world? Anyhow, that part of the world which counts, according to German ideas. Holland will havo a black mark against its name, and Germany will signify rts disapproval in the usual manner. No|>ody will know Holland when the job is done. And what of Switzerland 'f It it. did nothing else, it was soon to look &idoway« at Germany. The evidence of Her'r von Sohworastein will be most definite on this point. A Swiss condenser of milk was sen to gaze dclihI'lntely m the direction of Berlin with marked disrespect. And the republic took no action. "That's enough, Wilwill observe. "Here. Hindenburg, you've gut a kindly fare. Just get a couple of hundred thousand of the brave lads who (leaned up Belgium in the early days, and put Switzerland's pot on." "R'ghto!" Hindenburg will reply, and the Prussian Guards will buckle on their skis and go forth to do justice to Switzerland. William will remark as lie sees them <ifF. "Take care that a Switacr never looks n German in 'hi' face itg.iin. "My ontli!" Hin denburg w*ll reply, courteously, wit'i his (ibtomary cheery smile, nucl tho lirnve boys will start off to give Switzerland such a warming up a« lo Jeopardise the ice industry for many :< * ir prXTTTVR EXPEDITIONS. Meanwhile Germany will lime to deal with one or two other trenchcroin nations there are the Danes, who have, for years, been insulting, in that Iliov failed to niipreiiatc the honour rnniWreil on F3. lilenwi":.Holht-.-in l.v bei»£ included in the German Empire ■

and Sweden, which omitted to attach Kussia through Finland; and Norway, which is altogether too close to perfidious England to be wholesome. And finally tuer© is the republic of Andorra, in tlie fastnesses of the .Pyrenees. Andorra hadn't said anything that could be remembered, and that very fact would make its attitude suspicious. "Anyhow, 1 don't like thes« here republics," William will remark, "They re subversive of discipline. See that Andorra kisses itself good-bye. They're only twelve miles square, with a population of a couple of thousand, so you ought to have 6ome rare old sport. You can take on this little lot. It is an honour I have reserved for my own little boy." "1 don't think," the Crown Prince will reply. "Ain't there one a bit easier ?" " You shall have a hundred thousand of my picked Bavarians," tho Kaiser will oner magnanimously, and the Crown Prince will inarch forth with his path strewn with roses, a.i: the Army Service Corps ae Ballet, and the rest of the nppurtences of an up-to-date royal soldier going out to fight the toe. All this will take a little time. Theso foolish countries and treacherous countries, which omitted to join in the great work of civilising humanity, will have no chanoe against the might o". Culture. Still, in their uncouth, savage way, they will put up fights—and some of them pretty good fights. And oven when thoy are thoroughly disciplined and brought to heel, there still remain a tew other lands for Germany to conquer. There is America, north and south and east and west, and there is Asia and Australia and South Africa, where that arch traitor Botha still flourishes unpunished. This will take what is known in court circles as a bit of doing. Still, our friends the pessimists, with their touching faith in German invincibility, know full well tnat it will be surely accomplished some day. But, even when the whole world w adequately subdued and tho German language is made compulsory in Tcheng Tsi and Lake Chad and Ngatiomatomu and Tibbooburra and Johnson (Ohio), the Kaiser will still have a big problem in theatrical production to carry into effect. What has he done all this for? It has only been a preliminary. The real important part of the job has yet to come. As Kaiser of the Germanic dominions, ho has to make his triumphal progress down Unter den Linden —a task which may be attended by considerable personal risk by that time. Then he has more journeys ahead of him than a journeyman traveller. He has to go to France,and be crowned at Versailles as Emperor of the Franks, and take a lightning trip over across the Channel to ride down the Strand with a bodyguard of Beefeaters from Potsdam, prior to the-coronation ceremony in Westminster Abbey. The moment that little job over, he'll have to hustle for his special train to catch the boat to Spain, where he will be installed as Grand Inquisitor, possibly with the appropriate accompaniment of a grand burning of Spanish. Nationalists who have proved impervious to the splendour of Culture. Then there will be a trip across the Gulf of Lyons to Home, where William in the robes of Nero, will sing songs of his own composition, which victims, tied to stakes, are compelled to listen to, just as the other Nero used to torture his victims in the Coleseum. At Constantinople lie will pause to perform his little turn as tho Byzantine Emperor at Santa Sophia, , and then the special camel train will hurry him to Acbatana, where he will mount his favourite elephant to give his famous impersonation of Alexander the Great. In China, WilLam will assume the role of female impersonator, as he acts the part of the Dowager Empress; in Japan he will double the parts of the Mikado and the Snogun, and a special steamer will wlnsk him off to Australia, where he will, for a brief period, appear as W. H. Holman, giving an air of verisimilitude by borrowing a few millions, and letting another Norton Griffiths contract. After a little interlude, as King Prempeh of Dahomey, in which he will feel more at home than since leaving Germany, seeing that the custom of the country demands appropriate human sacrifices, he will catch the royal yacht to cross the Atlantic to be crowned in Chicago e; Emperor of all the Americas. There he will impersonate the greatest of all the Americans—not George Washington, not Alexander Hamilton, not Abraham Lincoln, not Teddy Roosevelt. Not on your life! William knows how to touch the great heart of the public, though he generaL ly docs it with a bayonet. For his coronation ceremony in America he will make his first appearance as Charlie Chaplin, and put the finishing touch on German culture. After that it will be time for William to die. As a matter of fact, we could all bear up with fortitude it the news of hw demise were announced considerably sooner.