THE KAISER’S MEDAL.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 94, 19 April 1916, Page 6

THE KAISER’S MEDAL.

Germany’s share in the suppression of the Boxers gave the Kaiser an excuse for striking a medal and conferring it on President Roosevelt. A little later the late John Hay, American Secretary of State, Avrote to the President: “Count Quadt has been hovering round the State Department in ever-narrowing circles for three days, and at last swooped upon me this afternoon, saying that the Foreign Office, and even the Palace, Unter de Linden, was in a state of intense anxiety to know how you received his Majesty’s Chinese medal, conferred only upon the greatest sovereigns. As 1 had not been authorised by you to express your emotions, I had to sail by dead reckoning, and, considering the vast intrinsic value of the souvenir—l should say at least 35 cents —and its wonderful artistic merit, representing the German Eagle eviscerating the Black Dragon, and its historical accuracy, which gives the world to understand that Germany was it and the rest of the universe nowhere, I took the responsibility of saying to Count Quadt that the President could not have received the me-

dal with anything but emotions of pleasure commensurate with the high appreciation he entertains for the Emperor’s majesty, and that a formal acknowledgment would be made in due course. He asked me if he was at liberty to say something to his Government, and I said he was at liberty to say whatever th e spirit moved him to utter.”

Plow times change! To-day the Kaiser would sooner hang Roosevelt than honour him, and even the corpse of Hay would not be safe if Germany conquered America.