No. XL.
(From a German.)
Yes, and for the very reason that I am a German I am speaking to you, so that you may know what one German at least thinks of you and your deeds. For I know that even where you sit walled about by your flatterers, ramparted against the intrusion of any fresh breath of criticism, and protected by entanglements of barbed wire against any hint of doubt as to your god-like attributes—even there I know that my voice shall in time reach you, and you shall become aware that there is a German who dares to say of you what millions of Germans think and soon will dare to say.
You are the man, Sir, who by a word spoken in a seasonable moment might have forbidden the War, and this word you refused to speak because, knowing your own preparations for war and those of the nations whom you forced to be your enemies, you anticipated an easy and a swift triumph. You believed that, after spending a few thousands of men and a few millions of marks, victory would be yours, and you would be able, as an unquestioned conqueror, to dictate peace to those who had dared to oppose you. And thus in a few months at the most you would return to Berlin and prance along the flower-strewn streets at the head of your victorious and but little-injured regiments. It is told of you that lately, when you visited a great hospital crowded with maimed and shattered men, your vain and shallow mind was for a moment startled by the terrible sight, and you murmured, "It was not I who willed this." In part you were right. You did not consciously will to bring upon your country the suffering and the misery you have caused, because you were willing to take the gambler's chance; but in the sight of God, to whom you often appeal, you will not escape the responsibility for having steadily thrust peace and conciliation aside when, as I say, by one word you might have avoided war.
Germany, you will say, is a great nation and cannot brook being insulted and defied. Great Heaven, Sir, who denied that Germany was great? Who wished to insult or defy her? Not France, whose one desire was to live in peace; not Russia, still bleeding from wounds suffered at the hands of Japan; not England, still, as of old, intent on her commercial development, though anxious, naturally enough, for her Fleet; not Italy, bound to you by a treaty designed to guard against aggression. It is true that all nations were becoming weary of a violent and hectoring diplomacy, of a restless and jealous punctilio seeking out occasions for misunderstandings and quarrels, and rushing wildly from one crisis to another; but under your direction this intolerable system had been patented and put in operation by Germany and by no other nation. It was as though a parvenu, uncertain of his manners and doubtful as to his reception, should burst violently into a salon filled with quiet people and, having upset the furniture and thrown the china ornaments about, should accuse all the rest of treading on his toes and insulting him. So did Germany act, and for such actions you, who had autocratic power—you, at whose nod Chancellors trembled—you loved their tremors—and Generals quaked with fear—must be held responsible. What low strain of vulgarity was it, what coarse desire to bluster and rant yourself into fame and honour, rather than to deserve them by a magnanimous patience and a gentleness beyond reproach, that drove you on your perilous way? It was your pettiness that at the last plunged you into the War.
And now that you have been in it for little short of two years, how stands the Fatherland, and where are the visions of easy and all but immediate victory? Germany is bleeding at every pore. Her soldiers are brave; but to confirm you on your throne you force them day by day to a slaughter in which millions have already been laid low. That other nations are suffering too is for me no consolation. My thoughts are centred on Germany, once so nobly great, and now forced by a restless and jealous lunatic into a war to which there seems no end.
I sign myself in deep sorrow,
A German.