Kaiser and Bishop

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2, 12 January 1905, Page 1

Kaiser and Bishop

Some months ago— it was, we think, about the first ot August ol last year—the Father of Lies appeared by, Ins lawful attorney, an l ex-priest ' lecturer, and set afloat a fantastic tale about the Emperor of Germany and Dr. Behzler, the Catholic bishop of Metz. Stated in briefest terms, the story was to this effect : that Dr. Benzler had interdicted a Catholic cemetery because of the unauthorised burial of a non-Catholic therein, and that the Kaiser, in the course of a flaming personal interview, rib-roasted the ' proud prelate ' for this high crime with words that smote like a rod of ret-hiot iron.. The story seems to have been crawling around for nearly three months among tdie ' religious ' gutter press 1 before it was picked up out of the dirt by the ' Daily News,'which has a ldng nose and a keen scent for tit-bits of No-Popery romance. That was, we believe, in October^ The portentous item of ' news ' was at once sent tingling over the submarine wires to Australia and New Zealand. The story was, however, incomplete. Lucifer's hrst attorney had tor gotten to give a verbatim report of the Kaiseir's fiery castigation of Bishop Benzler, A, Dresden gutter-paper, however, supplied the omission— perhaps to the best of the writer's ability, but he made a poor attorney after all, being possibly a novice at the game.* The result was what liabelais terms one of those ' flimflam stories and pleasant fooleries '- that wotul'd have added to the gaiety of our dull, grey life, but for two reasons : that the insane tale has been taken in solemn and portentous earnest by sundry steel-> clad idiofe of the Order of Scissiors-and-Paste ; and that it has probtably been bolted whole by the gobemouches who are prepared to accept any statement, however grotesque or impossible, so long as it flings the stigma of diabolism at the Church of the Ages.

Gay lays' down for newspaper and other fibsters' the following golden rule of the ungentle art of lying :— ' Lest men suspect your tale untrue, Keep probability in view.' The Dresden Ananias, however, outraged this cardinal principle of the game aud produced a farrago of oalpable contradictions and grotesque improbabilities that could not have deceived anyone who uses his eyes and brains. Here are a few sarruplps in point : (1) The Kaiser, in a vulgar liiteen-minutes' abuse of Bistiop Benzler, is made tip reier to himsejt as ' King ' in AlsaceLorraine. But even the clumsiest Dresden fibster and his most sleepy-foeaded London or New Zealand echo might be expected to know thai the Kaiser is King only in Prussia, and that in Alsace-Lorraine and the rest of the Fatherland he is Emperor. (2) The Kaiser is made to accuse Bishop Benzler, of Meitz, of having ' interdicted ' a Cattoohc cemetery in his diocese. But the waterspout of imperial abuse is represented as having been poured out on the platform of the Strassburg railway station ; it is, moreover, not directed against the Bishop of Metz, but the ' Bishop of Strassburg ' ; and to cr,own the absurdity, the high crime which it is intended to punish is not the interdicting of a Catholic cemetery, but the ' cursing ' and ' anathematising ' of a PROTESTANT one ! Of course no Catiholic bishop claims jurisdiction over a Protestant cemetery. Verily, the Dresden Munchausen sadly violated the ' unities ' in the insane tale which he set afloat. (3) Kaiser Wilhelm, is also made to wind up a long-drawta tirade of misstatement, misrepresentation, and vulgar abuse by threats of using the ' mailed fist ' upon the Catholic body and recommencing an era of religious persecution. This is, perhaps, the most grotesque improbability in all the silly tale, lhe Kaiser is no Solon. But he has too much elementary prudence to indulge in threats of that sort. One greater than he— the Man of Blood and Iron— went farther in that direction than mere threats. He tried harsh and actual persecution. But he went to Canossa. Moreover, we are glad to believe that there is not in iall the German Fatherland a Catholic bishop that would tamely endure, either from King, Tsar, or Kaiser, such falsehoods and such tyrannical menaces a» the agent of the Father of Lies in Dresden placed in the mjouth of the Emperor Wilhelm 11.

The whole story is, of course, a fabrication— the coinage, presumably, ot the brain of some imaginative journalist whose head was fuddled with deep potations of Schiedam schnapps or Dresden beer. As soon as the little Dresden journal published its 4 faked ' speech t 0 the world, tine story was blown to smithereens by reputable journals all over Germany. Yet, in the face of these public, repeated, and authoritative denials, the Berlin correspondent of the London ' Daily News ' repeated the grotesque ' yarn.' No-Popery venom seems to be more urgently called for than brains a s a qualification lor the position of Continental correspondent of the ' Daily News.' For years pasit that Nonconformist organ has made itselt the sounding-board of the continental atheist piess, and, generally speaking, it displays a fanaticism that is reminiscent of the wild No-Popery daya of 1851. Even apart irom this, the ' Daily News ' might take as its motto the principle set forth by a character in Kipling's ' A Day's Work ' : ' There is no sense in telling too much truth.' Our readers will, for instance, recall its sensational and detailed description of the massacre of the Legations in Pekin in 1900— an event which, happily, never took place. Only a few months agio tlhe same ha'porth of morning sensationalism published a disgraceful forgery which, to its cost, it imputed to Colonel Vaughan, brother of the late eminent Cardinal of that name.

The ' Daily News ' version of the Dresden fabrication was published on an auspicidus date— Guy Fawkes's day— 'and was duly cabled to us out here on the outer rim of the world. The attention of the Bishop o!

Metz was drawn to the affair, and this is what he had to say about it :— Metz, 13th November, 1904. ' All the Catholic papers in Germany have already some time ago protested against the so-called utterances of the Emoeror to the Bishop of Metz. Not one iota of the expressions is true. These perfidious falsehoods show the spirit in which the agitation against the Catholic Church is carried on. *i* • W. BENZLER, Biahop.' The ' Times ' and reputable journals generally, both in and out of England, did not disgrace their pages by republislhing the insane ' fake ' which was so gushingly welcomed by the ' Daily News.' It passes our comprehension that in New Zealand it should have been taken seriously by any journalist not adorned with a strait waistcoat. But one of the most coramion forms of insanity is that of the people who thmk that nobody else thinks.