KAISER’S CRUSADE AGAINST DRINK.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 143473, 21 April 1911, Page 7

KAISER’S CRUSADE AGAINST DRINK.

Kaiser Wilhelm (writes the Berlin ■, correspondent of an American paper) ( has bent his back to the herculean task i of making the Fatherland students digi nifiod. They are not to swear, or fight i butchorlike duels, or make vulgar, transitory lovo to innkeepers’ scullorymnids. Worse still —they are not to drink. . Naturally, cynics predict the Kaiser s : failure. But what Wilhelm 11. sets ; his hand to he does; and Germany re--1 members his dictum; “I am Father of ! the Fatherland’s youth; and my paron- ■ tal will is law.” The enterprise was started only during the present year. At a Konigs- ; berg University matriculation ceremony ' Rector Manigt turned with the following words to the dumbfounded students: _ , . ‘‘ln connection with the Berlin University centenary our Kaiser, who is : much interested in student life, bids me counsel you no longer to seek academic recreation and youthful gaiety ■ in the dense air of the beer saloon. I Make merry, but do not fall slaves to ralcohol. Commit to memory this Imi perial precept. .... I The students committed it to memory and then fled headlong to the . nearest beer shop, whore they quaffed i like berserkers in Walhalla. MORE SUCCESS AT BERLIN.

The attempt to convert tho Berlin students came nearer to success. “Example,” said Kaiser Wilhelm, “is better than precept. I shall show them how I have mastered tho art of being merry though .sober.” And ho commanded that five undergraduates bo invited to tho centenary banquet. Tho chosen victims, yearning for honest beer, arrived at the banquet hall whore they wore to drink champagne with princes, counts and shining ambassadors plenipotentiary. These exalted ones received them like human beings. Kaiser Wilmelm patted their backs, preached against intemperance, and gave them his portrait as a student at Bonn. Crown Princess Cecilo let them kiss her dimpled hands. After a four hours’ deluge of respectability they returned to their comrades converted forever to sober life. But the comrades resented the shiny faces and brand new courtly manners, and exacted sardonic retribution. They dosed tho backsliders with frothy Munich mixed with schnapps, and hurled them in ton minutes from the apex of courtly self-control into the dizziest abyss of normal Academic tipsiness. Tho situation was saved. SEVEN PINTS AT A SITTING.

But Kaiser Wilhelm is a persevering man, and he made fresh attempts to save tho students’ souls. Ho mot at Herr Bethmann-Hollweg’s house a rednosed student at Freiburg and catechised him about Freiburg’s attitude towards the pewter pot. “Your Majesty,” was tho answer, “I have never seen a man drinking more than four litres (seven pinte) at a sitting.” “The Kaiser/’ says a local newspaper, "was disgusted by this reply, and he expressed in the strongest terms his loathing for this immoderate guzzling, which, no said, is a disgrace to Germany.” And at tho Chateau of Hohkonigsberg ho told another student; “Drinking is a bad education for my service.” Ho added that no beer drinker would become a Rhodes scholar, and made tho remark that "A student should be a gentleman.” The young men of Bonn, who are mostly counts, complained that the Kaiser was putting a severe strain upon the loyalty of his most loyal class. But Kaiser Wilhelm persisted, and tho latest rumour is that he will call a conference of Prussian professors “to consider the attainment of a better moral tone among young men at universities.” KNOWS HOW IT IS HIMSELF.

The Kaiser is all the keener on carrying through the reform because ho has\soen the drinking himself. The drunkenest students in Germany are the members of the aristocratic “Borussia" corps at Bonn, of which tho Kaiser and most of his sons have been members. To-day tho corps has on its list a near relative of Bismarck, four relatives of tho lato Chancellor Prince Hohenlohe, seven junior members of reigning German houses, and a whole score of youthful chieftains of ducal and princely clans. For drink, impertinence and rowdinoss tho smart Borussians beat all tho other corps put together, so that when plebeian corps are brought to book for making what Germans call “krawalle” —literally a riot—they always appeal to tho precedent of the aristocratic Borussia, a corps which nobody dare touch.

Among pedants of student etiquette Borussia is sometimes blamed, because its millionaire members drink expensive wines, whereas student democratic traditions proclaim beer to bo an infinitely nobler drink. But the Borussians, their worst critics admit, make up in quantity what' they thus lack in quality. KRAWALLE A YEAR AGO.

‘ In tho month of Uccomber, 1909, the “krawalle” of tho bravo Bonn students had reached a height which seems to have convinced Kaiser Wilhelm that something must bo done. The students had arranged a beer party near Ruongsdorf, and when it was finished they naturally started for homo intoxicated. They stormed their special train, smashed all tho windows, slit up tho cushions, and set about uncoupling tho locomotives

Next they sot going tho steam whistle, destroyed the electric light, and hurled a conductor through a broken window. Only after a fight with several score of policemen was order restored. Members of the Palatia, Teuton, Rhino and Hansa corps wore brought up for trial,, the Borussians being exempt, “because they already wore suspended for still more serious excesses.” Railroadmen swore that tho service was endangered, and that only tho resolution of a fireman prevented a serious accident. Tho students had committed what in German law is tho heinous offence of “assaulting an official while in tho discharge of his duty.” All got off with light fines. Had they been working-men they would have gone to gaol for a year. The culprits claimed that they should go free because they already had been punished by their own corps. All corps indeed claim tq have independent sovereignty. v KAISER MUCH ANGERED. Kaiser Wilhelm was much angered by this incident, and spoke to the father of one student, who is a palace official, asking him sharply why ho had not taught his son hotter manners. Tho Radical newspapers demanded that the students should bo sent to gaol. But tho time has not come for that. It was shortly after this occurrence that the Kaiser opened tho anti-beer campaign, and at the same time set about trying to make his student subjects respectable all around. So far ho has had small success. One reason is that the Gorman student regards respectability as a fraudulent Yankee import— a sort of ethical wooden nutmeg. Kaiser Wilhelm took his cuo

from America. Until late in life he never quarrelled with the innately abandoned character of tho college “bursch.” He regarded the beer, the duels, the unsoaped faces, and tho loyemaking as necessary parts of every gentleman’s training. Then suddenly dawned tho day of Gorman interest in American colleges. Tho Roosevelt exchange professors began to tell unseemly, incredible yarns about tho respectability of American students. Tho interested Kaiser asked numberless questions. The professors replied with legends about the saintly lives of young Americans with high aspirations and wrinkled brows who had not a drop of beer or duel blood in their veins.

i MAKES AMERICA THE PATTERN. I Kaiser Wilhelm awoke to the fact I that universities are not brewery ani noxes and have no inherent antagonism Ito razors and soap. From this inspiraI tion—and backed by his pious consort, | Augusta—he conceived the plan to reform tho Fatherland’s twenty-one uni- ! versities on American lines. That ! moans, says the student, to rob them j of their romance, picturesqueness and I hilarity. The luckless “bursch” of tho future : is to bo neatly clad, with clean finger I nails, with a passion for sports, and I an unsbakeable affection for lemonade. ; —Next to America, it is tho Kaisorin 1 who is in the plot, and next to the . Kaiserin it is her fifth son, Oscar. The : Kaiserin does not accept tho dictum of j Emanuel Kant that “each sox should ! discipline its own,” and she is horrified, 1 so pooplo say, at the vicious, windowi breaking ways of the young men ofI Hoidloberg and Bonn. And Oscar also i disapproves. Oscar is a son who would warm any I mother’s heart. Himself a Bonn and 1 a member of the tipsy Borussians, he I resolutely set his face against excessive j drink. He attended, they say, a ’ “kommers' of comrade corpsmen and | drank only half a litre of beer. A [ certain von Keim resented tlmvuncora- | radoliko abstinence by getting unusually | drunk and standing on his head, whereI upon the decent Oscar loft the euterI tainment. OSCAR FORMS DRY LEAGUE, i In order to bo a better example he ; formed a group of students of quite 1 depraved respectability and treated i them to temperance beverages. From i this arose an ignoble organisation di--1 rected against all the traditional dis-. ! reputabilities of student life—against I beer, indiscriminate love-making, dirty faces, and the kindly, indispensable , pawnshop. Bonn was wroth. Already it suspected Oscar because he was a royal prince and owned a razor, and now it showed its derision by sing-' ing an irreverent song with the refrain, “Oscar mein, Sohnlein, kein mehr Bier!”

Ostracised thus, Oscar went from bad to worse. When representing his fellow students at an academic function ho counselled them “to fear God and lead soberer lives.” Tho Borussians followed the advice by holding an uproarious “kommers,” slitting open one another’s chocks, and breaking half the windows in tho town.

And tho State's attorney when ho prosecuted them took the cue from the Kaiser and said: “Only in Germany do wo witness such scandals. ' In America students are quite as lively and as animated as ours, but they show their corps’ pride in sport and not in breaking the windows of maiden ladies. ’’ This remark only confirmed the universities in their conviction that America is responsible for tho base attempt to make them sober.