7. The Criminal Kaiser

Having declared the enemy the sole culprit and originator of the war, the next step is to personify the enemy. As a nation consists of millions of people and the absurd analogy of an individual criminal and a nation may become apparent even to moderately intelligent people, it is necessary to detach an individual on whom may be concentrated all the vials of the wrath of an innocent people who are only defending themselves from “ unprovoked aggression.” The sovereign is the obvious person to choose. While the Kaiser on many occasions, by his bluster and boasting, had been a subject of ridicule and offence, nevertheless, not many years before, his portrait had appeared in the Daily Mail with “ A friend in need is a friend indeed ” under it. And as late as October 17,1913, the Evening News wrote:

We all acknowledge the Kaiser as a very gallant gentleman whose word is better than many another’s bond, a guest whom we are always glad to welcome and sorry to lose, a ruler whose ambitions for his own people are founded on as good right as out own.

When the signal was given, however, all this could be forgotten and the direct contrary line taken. The Kaiser turned out to be a most promising target for concentrated abuse. So successfully was it done that exaggeration soon became impossible; every crime in the calendar was laid at his door authoritatively, publicly and privately; and this was kept up all through the war. His past was reviewed, greatly to his discredit. Over his desire to fight Great Britain while we were engaged in the Boer War, however, there was an unfortunate contradiction in point of fact, as the following two extracts show:

Dclcasse, with the help of the Czar, thrust aside German proposals for a GDntinental combination against us during the Boer War.

“Tie Times," October 14, 1915 {editorial on Delcasse's resignation).

At the time of the South African War, other nations were prepared to assist the Boers, but they stipulated that Germany should do likewise. The Kaiser refused.

General Botha, reported in the “Daily News," September 5,191 j.

But over his criminality in the Great War there was no difference of opinion.

He had called a secret Council of the Central Powers at Potsdam early in July 1914, at which it was decided to enforce war on Europe. This secret plot was first divulged by a Dutch newspaper in September 1914. The story was revived by The Times on July 28, 1917, and again in November 1919. It was believed even in Germany, until reports were received from various officers in touch with the Kaiser showing how he spent these days, and it was finally disposed of and proved to be a myth by the testimony of all those supposed to have taken part in it. This was in 1919, after the story had served its purpose.

Only a few of the thousand references to the Kaiser’s personal criminality need be given.

He (the enemy) is beginning to realize the desperate character of the adventure on which the Kaiser embarked when he made this wanton war.

“ Daily Mail," October i, 1914.

The following letter from the late Sir W. B. Richmond, in the Daily Mail of September 22, 1914, is a forcibly expressed example of the accepted opinion :

Neither England nor civiliaed Europe and Asia is going to be set trembling by lunatic William, even though by his order Rheims Cathedral has been destroyed.

This last act of the barbarian chief will only draw us all closer together to be rid of a scourge the like of which the civilized world has never seen before.

The madman is piling up the logs of his own pyre. We can have no terror of the monster; we shall clench our teeth in determination that if we die to the last man the modern Judas and his hell-begotten brood shall be wiped out.

To achieve this righteous purpose we must be patient and plodding as well as energetic.

Our great England will shed its blood willingly to help rid civilization of a criminal monarch and a criminal court which have succeeded in creating out of a docile people a herd of savages.

Sir James Crichton Browne has said, in Dumfries: “ A halter for the Kaiser ” ; shooting him would be to give him the honourable death of a soldier. The halter is the shrift for this criminal.

Lord Robert Cecil said that for the terrible outrages, the wholesale breaches of every law and custom of civilized warfare which the Germans had committed, the people who were responsible were the German rulers, the Emperor and those who were closely advising him, and it was upon them, if possible, that out punishment and wrath should fall.

"The Times,” May 15, 191J.

Cities have been burned, old men and children have been murdered, women and young girls have been outraged, harmless fishermen have been drowned, at this crowned criminal’s orders. He will have to answer “ at that great day when all the world is judged ” for the victims of the Faiaba and the LMsitania.

Leader on depriving the Kaiser of the Order of the Garter, " Daily Express,” May 14, 1915.

A Punch cartoon in 1918 depicted the Kaiser as Cain. Under it was put:

More than 14,000 non-combatants have been murdered by the Kaiser’s orders.

There was a poster portrait of the Kaiser, his face composed of corpses, his mouth streaming with blood, which could be seen on the hoardings. The equivalent of this in France was “ Guillaume le Boucher,” the Kaiser in an apron with a huge knife dripping with blood. Throughout he was a good subject for the caricaturist, as he was so easy to draw.

The fiction having become popular and being universally accepted in the Allied countries, it became imperative for the Allied statesmen to insert a special clause in the Peace Treaty beginning :

The Allied and Associated Powers publicly arraign William II, of Hohenzollern, formerly German Emperor, for a supreme offence against international morality and the sanctity of treaties, and going on to describe the constitution of “ the special tribunal ” before which he was to be tried.

Having committed themselves to the trial of the Kaiser by a clause in the Peace Treaty, the Allies were obliged to go through the formality of addressing a note to the Netherlands Government on January 16, 1920, dwelling on the Kaiser’s “immense responsibility ” and asking for him to be handed over “ in order that he may be sent for trial.” The refusal of the Netherlands Government on January 23 rd was at once accepted and saved the Allied Governments from making hopeless fools of themselves. But before the decision was publicly known, and after it had been privately ascertained that the Government of Holland, whither the Kaiser had fled, would not give him up, the “ Hang the Kaiser ” campaign was launched, and in the General Election of 1918 candidates lost votes who would not commit themselves to this policy.

But the campaign had been launched before the decision of the Netherlands Government was made public.

The ruler (the Kaiser), who spoke for her pride and her majesty and her might for thirty years, is now a fugitive, soon to be placed on his trial (loud cheers) before the tribunals of lands which, on behalf of his country, he sought to intimidate.

Mr. Uojd George, House of Commons, July 3, 1919.

As a matter of fact, there was not the smallest intention of doing anything so absurd as try the Kaiser. Nor did anyone with knowledge of the facts believe him to be in any way personally responsible for starting the war. He was, and always had been, a tinsel figure-head of no account, with neither the courage to make a war nor the power to stop it.

His biographer, Emil Ludwig,* has written the most slashing indictment of William II that has appeared in any language, showing up his vanity, his megalomania, and his incompetence. But so far from accusing him of wanting or engineering the war, the author insists, time after time, on the Emperor’s pacific attitude. “ In all the European developments between 1908 and 1914, the Emperor was more pacific, was even more far-sighted, than his advisers.” At the time of the Morocco crisis “ the Emperor was peacefully inclined,”

' Kaiser William II, by Emil Ludwig.

and in the last days of July 1914, speaking of Germany, Austria, and Russia, Ludwig says :

Three Emperors avowedly opposed to war were driven by the ambition, vindictiveness, and incompetence of their Ministers into a conflict whose danger for their thrones they all three recognized from the first and, if only for that reason, tried to avoid.

Even Lord Grey says, now that it is all over:

If matters had rested with him (the Kaiser) there would have been no European War arising out of the Austro- Serbian dispute.

“ Twenty-Five Years” vol. it, p. z^.

Nevertheless, up to 1919 the Kaiser, as the villain of the piece, was set up in the Allied countries as the incarnation of all iniquity.

This very simple form of propaganda had a great influence on the people’s feelings. There can be no question that thousands who joined up were under the impression that the primary object of the war was to catch this monster, little knowing that war is like chess : you cannot take the King while the game is going on; it is against the rules. It would spoil the game. In the same way G.H.Q. on both sides was never bombed because, as a soldier bluntly put it, “ Don’t you sec, it would put an end to the whole bloody business.”

Finding he had unfortunately not been caught or killed during the war, the people put their faith in his being tried and hanged when the war was over. If he was all that had been described to them, this was the least that could be expected.

When, as months and years passed, it was discovered that no responsible person really believed, or had ever believed, in his personal guilt, that the cry, “ Hang the Kaiser,” was a piece of deliberate bluff, and that when all was over and millions of innocent people had been killed, he, the criminal, the monster, the plotter and initiator of the whole catastrophe, was allowed to live comfortably and peacefully in Holland, the disillusionment to simple, uninformed people was far greater than was ever realized. It was the exposure of this crude falsehood that first led many humble individuals to inquire whether, in other connections, they had not also been duped.