HISTORY REPEATED.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 7, Issue 430, 29 November 1918, Page 1

HISTORY REPEATED.

With the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm 11., and the signing of the armistice, comes to an end the mad dream of German world-domination. Herein, says the Rev. C. H, Laws, 8.A., we see the irony of history. When Germans meet at the festal board, their glasses will no more clink to " Der Tag.'' The once magic words, at whose sound eyes burned with visions of destiny, and hearts, sure of victory, flung themselves across the borders of the Fatherland, die in shame upon their lips to-day. For they recall a false and fevered dream, from which there has come a bitter awakening. They have proved a lying watchword, and have lured a proud people, to whom the future had promised affluence and power, into the mnst tragic humiliation of history. No German will teach them to his children in the new days that are at hand. As Lieut Col. A. A. Grace expresses it, the domination that the Kaiser sought was to have been a military domination, based on force of arms, upon a supreme German army and a supreme German navy, of which the the supreme commander was the Kaiser. The dream did not look so mad in the early days of August, 1914, at least so far as the military domination of Europe by the Kaiser's armed hordes was concerned; and there was not a German who did not believe that if the Continent of Europe were subjected to German rule it would only be a matter of a few years before the Imperial German Navy would be able to sweep from the oceans the British, American, and Japanese navies, and impose the Kaiser's will upon the whole world. The great and terrible scheme has failed, and has failed so completely that the Kaiser, who was to have ruled Europe and the world, is to-day an exile, without a crown, and the German nation, instead of lording it over the subject races of j Europe, is to-day helplessly at thoir mercy. So does history repeat itself. The dream of world conquest has always ended in misery. The Kaiser is only the last of many. Dr N. McLeod, in the "Scotsman," recalls the fate of the Prussian madman's predecessors. Three hundred years before the Christian era, Alexander the (ireat swept through the ancient world like a tornado, but at the age of 32 he died at Bagdad, and his opalescent dream of world world dominion burst like a bubble. Rome built up a world empire so great that Cicero could write: " Wherever you are, remember that you are equally within the power of the Emperor"; but the men who wielded that sceptre came almost all to a violent end, and the empire fell tottering to the earth. Napoleon dominated the world with the dynamic force of his personality, making emperors and kings the servants of his will. "We are going to make an end of Europe," he declared when he set forth in his Russian campaign. . . . In three years we shall be masters of the universe." But the would-be master of the universe left his armies frozen on the Russian plains, and St. Helena was waiting for him even as he spoke The Kaiser is the last victim of the intoxicating gas whence that dream springs. The American Ambassador, Sir Gerard, ha 3 recorded how tie last of the Hohenzollerns said: " Alexander, Caesar, Thoodoric, Frederic, and Napoleon aimed at world dominion ; they failed, I shall succeed" But the same u.-seen powers that brought his predecessors to ruin have doomed iiini also "It is not," says Mr McLeod by cataclysmic acts that judgment is wrought, but by the regular working of the normal laws that govivn lif *. ['he ambition of i* dooruP' 1 , becaus •no human person alify is equal to tho strain of sui-h a burden Only colossal egotism <an dream such a dr«am, and when success serins within the grasp the egotism develops i' to mani t These would-be conquerors of the world all go the same way. Alexander, cmvinced that no mere man could win such victories, proclaims himself a god, and kills his friend for doubting his divinity. Napoleon walks at last amoDg men as if he were a god. ' You say man proposes and God disposes ! I propose, and 1 dispose,' declared the Corsiean. Tho Kaiser has gone the same road. 'On mo the spirit of Go 1 descended,' he declared. 'lam His weapon, His sword, His vicegerent. Woe to the disobedient. Death to cowards and unbelievers.' On the altar of this mad vanity judgment and wisdom are sacrificed. To achieve tho end humanity is slain in hetacombs. In eleven years Napoleon slew four millions of tho youth and manhood of Europe, that he might gratify his megalomania; in four years the Kaiser has slain some twenty millions But th" fruit of that is isolation at last in tho midst of a horrified wo: 1«1'