POMPOUS MEGALOMANIA.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 April 1917, Page 6

POMPOUS MEGALOMANIA.

THE "ALL HIGHEST" ON HIMSELF.

The American humorists who have been jeering with characteristic irreverence at the Gorman Emperor's Proclamation can scarcely fail to find matter for still more bitter gibes in the letter from His Majesty to his Chancellor, writes the London Times of January 11). it tkey detected pompous megalomania and obvious insincerity in the former, assuredly they will find both, aggravated by an almost incredible self-conceit, in tlie latter. The self-revelation is ludicrous. Here is this slave of Prussian "militarism," who wantonly plunged the world into war in August, 1914, at the bidding of the German soldier clique, confidentially informing his servant and accomplice last. October that he alone amongst the rulers of the nations has the conscience and the moral courage to speak the saving word and propose peace. This act, we are given to understand, was not the result of a sudden impulse. He and the statesman who openly proclaimed to a startled world that the end justifies the means, and who privily urged our Ambassador not to be fettered by just a word or a scrap of paper had debated the matter, and the Emperor had turned over this conversation thoroughly in his mind. Still less docs the letter suggest that mundane considerations of any kind—such as a sense of waning strength at home or of failures in the field—influenced the writer. It is presented to the world, nnd particularly, we imagine, to the German masses, as a spontaneous emanation from the goodness and the mercy of the Emperor's heart. He has cast his eyes in pure pity upon the peoples who are his enemies. Looking down upon them with serene gaze from his exalted height, he discerns that they are deluded by their wicked and ambitious Governments, who feed them with lies and frauds and fill them with the evil passion of hatred. They have none with the power and the will to guide them aright, and to do "the moral deed" which would free the world —"including neutrals" from the burden which weighs upon all. The deed, he owns, demands rather exceptional qualities. It requires a ruler who "has a conscience," a just- man who fears God, who has bowels of compassion for his people and even for the peoples of his enemies, who recks nothing of wilful misinterpretation, but thinks only of how be may benefit men. The Allies, His Majesty is sadly conscious, possess nobody with these virtues. 'But what of that? He in his solicitude for their necessities will hasten into the vacant place. "I have the courage," he declares; "trusting in God I shall dare to take this step." The Chancellor accordingly is ordered to take the necessary steps "without delay." The reasons for such delay as took place are tolerably obvious, and so are some reasons for publishing Ibis letter now, nearly three months after date. The Chancellor "puts the person of the Monarch in the foreground" in his speech to the Reichstag, and it is deemed expedient to keep him there. But the Press management has not been so good as usual. It was an unpardonable oversight, on an occasion when "the ethical sense of duty and the high moral courage" of /,<.'. All Highest were to be paraded for glorification by the common people, to allow a political party to claim the credit for this sublime "moral deed." Yet that is what the Vorwarts has been suffered to do, and to do in a fashion really tending to rob the act on which the Emperor ingenuously prides himself of almost all its ethical merit.and to appropriate this merit to the Socialists. The blunder is the less intelligible becnuse this newspaper is now notoriously a "tame" organ conducted under Government control. Its appeal to the Socialists of other lands to support the peace manoeuvre is no doubt authorised, if not inspired; but what' must be His Majesty's feelings when he reads the argument on which the appeal is based? The Vorwarts summons—very vainly—the "comrades" of the Allied nations to follow the example of their German brethren. "Induce your Governments," it exhorts I hem, "to combat the prolongers of war in your countries as decidedly as we have combated ours." It is true that no evidence of this decided combat waged against militarism by the German Socialists has yet been observable to foreigners; but the Vorwarts asserts that it has been delivered, and suggests very plainly that the Socialist Party, and not the All Highest at all, merits the praise which he lavishly appropriates to himself. The most, elementary sense of art should have forbidden the German Press Bureau to permit the rival claims to appear together. It spoils both.