THE EX-KAISER.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 October 1919, Page 12

THE EX-KAISER.

REASONS FOR TRIAL.

London, July 3. Sir Henry Morris says, in the course of a letter to The Times: — Many must have been amazed at the quibbles, subtleties, and subterfugeslegal, socio-political, religious—of some of your correspondents, who have bo invidiously and ingeniously endeavored to emancipate from trial and punishment the most execrable criminal on earth, and thus to set aside one of the provisions of the Versailles Treaty and one of the principal objects of the League of Nations.

What, matters it where the trial is held, so long as this most wicked culprit is brought to justice, and—because of his shameful and shameless instigation una encouragement of heinous; murders,- merciless robberies, barbarous outrages, and ruthless enslavings—is made a warning for all time to future tyrants, whether dynastic, democratic, or demagogic? Sir Henry continues:—The writings, during the war, of von hoven, Hindenburg's farewell address to his troops, the Weimar speeches on. tho ratification of the Peace Treaty and the appeals of tjje German National Party and of the German Officers' League on the ex-Kaiser's behalf indicate the risks run by leaving the dethroned Emperor within (range of the influence or German intrigues and conspiracies. To the argument that we shall "feed ft Hohenzollern legend" and make a hero out of a martyr at the expense and to the disparagement of England if the trial takes place in London, we surely ought to pay no attention whatever. Resides, there is little or no fear of such a transfiguration. The ex-Kaiser's character has nothing of the hero in it. ;He has neither the military genius, nor [the capacity of leadership in battle, nor the ability for initiating schemes of civic and commercial progress that the Hohenzollern Frederick 11. possessed. Again, Napoleon, in spite of his ambition to obtain the hegemony of Europe, land its attendant crimes, was really a hero, and one of the greatest generals the world has produced. He personally led his armies to n Tca t victories. He was not a sneaking, but an open, defiant, and self-declared foe, who freejy expressed his hatred and envy of the British. The ex-Kaiser, on the other hand, never led his soldiers into action. His military career, like that of Louis XIV., consisted in being an onlooker at a siege when it was thought the place was sure to fall; and that nothing would prevent, him from marching into it caparisoned in all the panoply of victory, dike a treacherous hypocrite, he accepted the. hospitality of those whom, in his heart, he hated and envied; and, whilst professing the strongest attachment to this country, \vas conspiring against it in every quarter of the globe. Like a sneak and a coward, he deserted lis troops in their defeat, and ran away! from his country in the moment of its I disaster. How can the world possibly j regard such a poltroon as a hero or a! martyr?

The impeachment of Warren Hastings has been cited as a warning against the trial. But those familiar with Maeaulay's powerful essay on the subject find nothing in it to, remind them of Wilhelm 11. of Hohonzollern, except his resemblance of the Hindu Brahmin, the Maharajah Nuncomar, whose name is so inseparably associated with Warren Hastings' guilt and misfortune. If one atempts tb imitate Maeaulay's description of Nuncomar and the Bengali national character in 'describing the exKaiser, one would say:—What the horns are to the buffalo, what the paw is to the tiger, what the lie is to the intriguer and the rogue, what robbery is to the highwayman, what the stiletto U to the assassin, what the fingers-grip is to the garotter, what the torpedo and the U-boat are to the Teutonic pirate, deceit, diplomacy, and war are to Wilhelm 11.

Is such a man to be let off without a trial ? To borrow a simile from a passage in another article by Macaulay:— The poisoning of an Emperor is in one sense a far more serious matter than the poisoning of a rat. But the poisonin« of an Emperor by ordinary means with ordinary symptoms requires no record in a science journal, whereas t)ie poisoning of a rat may mark an era in chemistry. " In like manner, a comman-, der whose army in warfare kills tens of thousands of the enemy by ordinary bayonet and gunfire attacks calls forth neither criticism nor protest nor reproach. But when a self-styled "Supreme War Lord" tells his soldiers that through Divine gracj and by the help of science professors he has been able to provide his army with poiaon-gas shells by which the enemy can bo annihilated, and awards iron crosses to those of his sailors who sink Lusitanias and hospital ships and bomb undefended towns, it is he, and not alone his agents, who ought to be arraigned, with the object of deterring other rulers from following his evil courses. And why should not the felon whose crimes are far worse than had ever been committed before be dealt with in a manner which of itself forms a precedent? To punish disciplined subordinates, leave the malefactor, by whose authority and direction these subordinates were encouraged in their crimes, to "fall into the hands of Heaven, not into those of man," or merely to leave him to "the judgment of history," or to "his own conscience," or to treat him with simple "contempt," would be to act like the threshers who, having carefully separated corn from chaff, gathered the ■ liaff into the garner and flung the corn to the winds and into the fire.