WILHELM THE UNGRATEFUL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 33, 10 February 1915, Page 4

WILHELM THE UNGRATEFUL.

In the “Fortnightly Review” for December there appears a striking article by Mr Sidney Whitman on “The Right of Prussian Autocracy.” A “parvenu” nation, says the writer, lias foisted its worst features in its ruler. At Bonn University the Kaiser imbibed the ‘‘tenets, conduct, and the objectionable manners of the aristocratic corps-student,” and in barracks ho acquired further revolting “idiosyncrasies.” This training is largely responsible for the “preference shown to a most arrogant caste in the bestowing of important appointments.” Typical German manners are a result of following his lead. Further, German society since 1871 has lived on “Catchwords of Greatness,” and as the Kaiser grew to manhood “seeds of megalomania” were many and prevalent. He was not the only victim; and Mr Whitman points to the “abnormal number of degenerates among the'upper classes in Germany as exemplifying the results of approximation to the Emperor’s favorite type “close-cropped heads, truculent voices, and aggressive mien.” This “domineering spirit of command” is a clear departure from the Bismarckian tradition. The Kaiser distributing the works of Houston Chamberlain, fed his boisterous spirit and turned it into the Anglophobia which has culminated in the present war. For years a policy of treachery was pursued. King Fidward, better aware than most of his subjects of his nephew’s real character, was well informed of the ‘boastful; ill-natured gossip of the Emperor and his satellites,” Mr Whitman quotes Prince Hohenlohe’s view on the Kaiser as a corrective to “that eccentric Englishman Houston Chamberlain’s view of him as a champion of peace and a devout believer in the divine mission. . . “The German

Emperor is the coolest rationalist (meaning an agnostic), the greatest egotist, and the most ungrateful person lie had ever met.’ ”