II
Ferdinand of Coburg
But recently it would have seemed an impossible wager to undertake to find an even more abominable monster than their Kaiser and their Crown Prince. Nevertheless the wager has been made and won; this Coburg has been found.
And to think that in his time he aroused the enthusiasm of the majority of our women of France! About the year 1913, when I alone was beginning to nail him to the pillory, they were exalting his name and flaunting his colours. "Paladin of the Cross"—as such he was popularly known among us. Oh, a sincere paladin he was, to be sure, wearing the scapular, steeped in Masses, after the fashion of Louis XI., yet one fine morning secretly forcing apostasy upon his son. Moreover we know that to-day, for our entertainment, he is making preparations for a second comedy of conversion to the Catholic faith, which he recently renounced for political reasons, and over there he will find priests ready to bless the operation and to keep a straight face the while.
He, too, has a Gorgon's head, and his face, like the Kaiser's, is marked with the stigmata of knavery and crime. Twenty-five years ago, at the railway station of Sofia, when for the first time I came under the malevolent glance of his small eyes, I felt my nerves vibrate with that shudder of disgust which is an instinctive warning of the proximity of a monster, and I asked:
"Who is that vampire?"
Someone replied in a low, apprehensive voice:
"It is our prince; you should bow to him."
In private life this man has proved himself a cowardly assassin, committing his murders from a safe distance, for he prudently crossed the border whenever his executioner had "work to do" by his orders. And then, as soon as any particular headsman threatened to compromise him he would take effective steps to cripple him.[4]
And this man, too, offers up prayers in imitation of that other. Recently, when there was a hope that his great accomplice was at last about to die of the hereditary taint in his blood, he knelt for a long time between two rows of Germans, convoked as audience, to plead with heaven for his recovery—a monster praying on behalf of another monster—and he arose, steeped in divine grace, and said to the audience:
"I have never before prayed so fervently."
Those heavy-witted Boches, for whose benefit these apish antics were performed, were even they able to restrain their wild laughter? In political life, likewise, he is an assassin, attempting the life of nations. After his first foul act of treason against Serbia, his former ally, whom he took in the rear without any declaration of war, he endeavoured, it will be remembered, to throw upon his ministers the blame of a crime which was threatening to turn out badly. And again without warning he deals another traitorous blow to the same race of heroes, already overwhelmed by immense hordes of barbarians, like a highwayman who, under pretence of helping, comes from behind to give the finishing stroke to a man already at grips with a band of robbers.
Poor little Serbia, now grown great and sublime! Lately, in my first moments of indignation at the report that reached me of deeds of horror perpetrated in Thrace and Macedonia, I had accused her undeservedly of sharing in the guilt. Once again in these pages I tender her with all my heart my amende honorable.
If Germany's entente with Turkey was so little capable of being accomplished unassisted that it was found necessary to have recourse to the "suicide" of the hereditary prince, the entente with Bulgaria was made spontaneously. Their Kaiser and this scion of the Coburgs, who emulates him, and is, as it were, his duplicate in miniature, found each other fatally easy to understand. That such sympathy was likely to exist between them might have been gathered from a mere comparison of the two faces, each bearing the same expression of beasts that prowl in the night. How was it that our diplomatists, accredited to the little court of Sofia, suspected nothing nearly twenty months ago, when the treaty of brigandage was signed in secret? And to-day, until one devours the other, behold them united, these two beings, the refuse of humanity, compared with whom the foulest, most hardened offenders, who drag a cannon-ball along in a convict's prison, seem to have committed nothing but harmless and trifling offences.
Arouse yourselves, then, neutral nations, great and small, who still fail to realise that had it not been for us your turn would have come to be trampled underfoot like Belgium, like Serbia and Montenegro only yesterday! The world will not breathe freely until these ultimate barbarians have been completely crushed; how is it that you have not felt this? What else can be necessary to open your eyes? If it is not enough for you to witness in our country all the ruin inflicted on us of set purpose and to no useful end, to read a vast number of irrefutable testimonies of furious massacres which spared not even our little children; if all this is not enough look nearer home, look at the insolent irony with which this predatory race brings pressure to bear upon you, look at all the outrages, done audaciously or by stealth, which have already been committed on the other side of the ocean. Or again, if indeed you are blind to that which goes on around you, at least survey briefly all the writings, during centuries, of their men of letters, their "great men." You will be horrified to discover on every page the most barefaced apology for violence, rapine, and crime. Thus you will establish the fact that all the horror with which Europe is inundated to-day was contained from the beginning in embryo there in German brains, and, moreover, that no other race on earth would have dared to denounce itself with such cynical insensibility. And you, priests or monks, belonging to the clergy of a neighbouring country, who reproach us with impiety and are the blindest of men in proselytising for our enemies, turn over a few pages of the official manifesto addressed to the Belgian bishops, and tell us what to think of the soul of a people who continually take in vain the name of the "All Highest" in their burlesque prayers, and then make furious attacks on all the sanctuaries of religion, cathedrals, or humble village churches, overthrowing the crucifixes and massacring the priests. Is it logically possible for anyone, not of their accursed race, to love the Germans? That a nation may remain neutral I can understand, but only from fear, or from lack of due preparation, or perhaps, without realising it, for the lure of a certain momentary gain, through a little mistaken and shortsighted selfishness. Oh, doubtless it is a terrible thing to hurl oneself into such a fray! Yet neutrality, hesitation even, become worse than dangerous mistakes; they are already almost crimes.
An insane scoundrel dreamed of forcing upon us all the ways of two thousand years ago, the degrading serfdom of ancient days, the dark ages of old; he plotted to bring about for his own profit a general bankruptcy of progress, liberty, human thought, and after us, you, you neutral nations, were designated as sacrifices to his insatiable, ogreish appetite. At least help us a little to bring to a more rapid conclusion this orgy of robbery, destruction, massacres, and bloodshed. Enough, let us awaken from this nightmare! Enough, let the whole world arise! Whosoever holds back to-day, will he not be ashamed to keep his place in the sun of victory and peace when it once more shines upon us? And we, when at last we have laid low the rabid hyena, after pouring out our blood in streams, should we not almost have a right to say, with our weapons still in our hands:
"You neutral nations, who will profit by the deliverance, having taken no part in the struggle, the least you can do is to repay us in some measure with your territory or with your gold?"
Oh, everywhere let the tocsin clang, a full peal, ringing from end to end of the earth; let the supreme alarm ring out, and let the drums of all the armies roll the charge! And down with the German Beast!
FOOTNOTES:
[3] In addition to a thousand other widely known examples of his shameless knavery, I record another instance, which, moreover, may easily be verified; an instance perhaps not yet sufficiently widely published. Be it known to everyone that on August 2nd, 1914, on the very eve of the violation of Belgium, when the German Army was already massed on the frontier and all the orders had been given for the attack the next day, King Albert called upon the Kaiser for an explanation. The Kaiser replied officially through his diplomatists:
"The Belgians have no cause for alarm. I have not the slightest intention of repudiating my signature."
[4] Panitza, Stambouloff, etc.