GERMAN IMPERIAL DYNASTY.

Taihape Daily Times, 1 May 1919, Page 2

GERMAN IMPERIAL DYNASTY.

The German imperial dynasty is very short. It includes only three names; it began with the crowning of W illiam 1., at Ye.vsailk-s, on January 21, IS7I, it ended —almost ignobly—-with the abdication of his grandson, the Kaiser, on November 7. IS)Id: and the story of th e dynasty is as tragic :>,S it is brief. Wii liam I. .was wooden figure-head ot which Bismarck pulled the strings: and Bismarck was oii(> of the mean-si, as well as one of the, darkest, spirits in the polities of his generation. The Emperor Frederick reigned three months; ho was a dying man all the time, and’' no tale COltld well be more tragic. .Mr C. Grant Robm'tSun tells the story very effectively in his new book, “Bismarck.’’ “Death,’’ he wpites, “can bp very bitter. Bad -Frederick ’s three months of rub- been dogged by prolonged physical pain, and rl;e knowledge of failure - to this dreams, (they would have been a martyrdom; but to the bitterness ot pain and defeat were added, in the mystery of human things, the rebellion and: treachery of an ungrateful son, and the unpardonable tryanny of his Chancellor to all whom the Emperor loved or cared for—and hi ’ own helplessness to protect or to punish. Insolence, intrigue, defamation, and defiance are never so detestable as when they are employed against. the dying, and by those who reckon on the security that the Angel of Death at the door will bring their authors. There are black pag< s in Bismarck’s record and black pages in his character, but the blackest that no extenuation can obliterate are Recorded in th e three months from March El to June 1(3, ISSS.” The bitterest drop in that bitter cup of which the dying Emperor had to drink surely consisted of the “rebellion and treachery of an ungrateful sou”; and the Kaiser was that son. Ho was treacherous and ungrateful to both mother and father. In his abdication and his flight to Holland there was a touch of that same quality of “treachery,’’ with an added element of cowardice. towards his own household. As one London journal puts if. “ho left his invalid wife, his daughter-in-law, and hs young grandchldrcn in the hands of the revolutionaries, while he liimslof, with contemptible cowardice, escaped beyond the frontier.” And the Kaiser, it lias now bee discovered, had, for at least two weeks before he abdicated, bee ndespatching large consignments of food and “comforts’’ to the Dutch castle in which lie found refuge. “Is there any record.” asks a

London journal, "that either the Kaiser or the Crown Prince was o\ r or under fire?”