The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1920. PASSING OF AN EMPEROR.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3391, 21 January 1920, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1920. PASSING OF AN EMPEROR.

With which ixs incorporated ‘ ‘ The Taihape Post and 'Wa.imarino News.”

Lengthy cable messages yesterday disclosed that the Allies are intent upon having the late German Emperor arraigned for having infringed the sacred rule of human conscience, and in pursuance of this intention an official demand has been addressed to the Dutch Government to hand over Wilhelm Hohenzollern, that remarkablc specimen of autocratic or despotic, state craft, to the Allied policemen. The hitherto unprecedented entire disregard for international laws and usages governing War between civilised peoples form an undeniable basis for bringing Mr Hohenzollern to the common murderers’ dock to answer for the innumerable crimes, for anyone of which, and that the smallest, he would be liable to be shot. The Allied Su—preme Council adopted the text of the demand, and M. Clemenceau "Was entrusted with its despatch -to the Dutch Government. THow low in cunning and treachery an otherwise mighty monarch may descend is amply discovered in the long series of letters Mr Hohenzollern, while Emperor of Germany, wrote to his friend and victim, Nicholas Romanoif, While he was yet the Czar of «all the Russias. In ‘these letters there was one obvious thread of bitterness running through them all, and that was the unbending, unrelenting, hatred of Britain and of B'rita.in’s King. Those letters were not clever, nor was ‘there a shadow of that diplomacy -about then: that would prove convincing to any man of high intellect. As we read them to-day they arous-:3 mingled‘ feelings of ,disgust, pity, and levity. They invoke, by their unveiled cunning and obvious, transparency, intense surprise that -they should ever have deceived any educated man. Had the Czar of Russia. been a higily intellectual monarch he must; have felt disgusted and insulted with such rubbishyg, insincere, professio'ns-H of friendship. Luckily, ‘however, neither kings nor elected rulers have a.

W monopoly of sound intellect,’ whatever . they may have of that’ genius it is very frequently apt to step over “into the domains of lunacy. William Hohenzollern’s letters to “.Nicky”; his brutal engineering of “Armageddon,” and his scientific, unbridled frightfulness with which he conducted and prosecuted that great war has alienated from him the syi'n'patlTles of the whole civilised world. Of sorrow that so highly placed a personage could lapse into so a,ppa;lling a campaign of untold horror and frightfulness, there i 5 abundance, but even his cultivated friendship -in Holland admit the justness of whatever punishment ‘his crimes may bring upon him, and tlloS‘~‘

Dutch friends will hand him over in due course to aanswer personally fio-r the hide°“SlY flouting of all civilised 111109 Of Warfare, arid for his ruthlcssness in the destruction‘ of innocent human life. For 2:. crime which could not comparo_with that of the -German Enlpel'ol', Mary Stuart, Queen of Scloilrand, was beheaded on Isis February, 1587. This

beaautiful, highly ifffefllectual, accom-

plishcd woman, on an exceedingly doubtful pretext‘, forfeited her life, but. if William of Germany had 3. thousand lives to forfeit he could. not Cxpiate the crimes against peoples, humanity, and civilisation which his own. letters alone convict him of. The past portion of his crime the world 1v'£lrIll()11tS, but what of the current and the future outcome of his unparalclled lust for domination of the world? What a legacy this deposed German Emperor has left for humanity; his lust and greed are still destroying human lives by thousands per day, and who can predict when that orgy of destruction will cease? His great: unprecedented crime "Will flourish long into the future; it has all the elements for turning civilisation off the great highway into blind alleys and byways, and may yet. opel'a;te to the complete annihilation of all those arts that have been chal'a.eteristic of the highest and best in human progress. Evidence against him is ovcriirhelming and incapable of denial, and whatever pun-

ishmenif. any court may inflict, “he will a thousand times have earned and merited it. VVQ may now leave this poor, un-f-ortunafe human abortion to his fate, , we cannof; change it, for‘ we know that (not the ‘least of his crimes is the‘ ‘de-

ception he practised upon his own Subjects. W‘hua.tevel' may be the verdict, William Hohenzollern Ought never again to enjoy the rights of citizenship in any eo’uli‘try.