THE KAISER'S LETTER
House Doorn, April 5, 1921.
My Dear Field Marshal:
Accept my warmest thanks for your letter of March 30th, ult. You are right. The hardest thing of all for me is to be obliged to live in foreign parts, to follow, with burning anguish in my soul, the awful fate of our dear fatherland, to which I have devoted the labors of my entire life, and to be barred from co-operation.
You stood beside me during the dark, fatal days of November, 1918. As you know, I forced myself to the difficult, terrible decision to leave the country only upon the urgent declaration of yourself and the rest of my counselors who had been summoned that only by my so doing would it be possible to obtain more favorable armistice terms for our people and spare it a bloody civil war.
The sacrifice was in vain. Now, as well as before, the enemy wishes to make the German people expiate the alleged guilt of "Imperial Germany."
SILENT UNDER ATTACKS
In my endeavor to subordinate all personal considerations to the welfare of Germany, I keep myself completely in the background. I am silent in the face of all the lies and slanders which are spread abroad concerning me. I consider it beneath my dignity to defend myself against attacks and abuse.
In accordance with this policy of restraint I have also kept the Historical Tables mentioned by you strictly objective and made them accessible only to a narrow circle of acquaintances. I am utterly at a loss to understand how they have now become public through some sort of indiscretion or theft (?). The purpose inspiring me when I prepared the historical tables was this: To bring together strictly historical material by a systematic enumeration of sober facts, such as might enable the reader to form his own judgment of the historical happenings preceding the war. I found my most convincing sources, be it remarked, in the literature which has sprung up after the war, particularly in the works of natives of the enemy countries. Therefore I am glad that you find my modest contribution to history useful.
As to your suggestion to make the tables, which have been completed in the meantime, accessible to the German press, I thank you, and will follow it.[11]
Truth will hew a way for itself—mightily, irresistibly, like an avalanche. Whoever does not close his ears to it against his better judgment must admit that, during my twenty-six-year reign previous to the war, Germany's foreign policy was directed solely to the maintenance of peace. Its one and only aim was to protect our sacred native soil, threatened from the west and the east, and the peaceful development of our commerce and political economy.
Had we ever had warlike intentions we should have struck the blow in 1900, when England's hands were tied by the Boer War, Russia's by the Japanese War, at which time almost certain victory beckoned us. In any event, we assuredly would not have singled out the year 1914, when we were confronted by a compact, overwhelmingly superior foe. Also, every impartial man must acknowledge to himself that Germany could expect nothing from the war, whereas our enemies hoped to obtain from it the complete realization of the aims which they had based, long since, upon our annihilation.
The fact that my zealous efforts and those of my Government were concentrated, during the critical July and August days of 1914, upon maintaining world peace is being proved more and more conclusively by the most recent literary and documentary publications in Germany, and, most especially, in the enemy countries. The most effective proof thereof is Sazonoff's statement: "The German Emperor's love of peace is a guarantee to us that we ourselves can decide upon the moment of war." What further proof of our innocence is needed? The above means that the intention existed to make an attack upon one who was absolutely unsuspecting.
CALLS ACCUSATION FUTILE
God is my witness that I, in order to avoid war, went to the uttermost limit compatible with responsibility for the security and inviolability of my dear fatherland.
It is futile to accuse Germany of war guilt. To-day there is no longer any doubt that not Germany, but the alliance of her foes, prepared the war according to a definite plan, and intentionally caused it.
For the purpose of concealing this, the allied enemies extorted the false "admission of guilt" from Germany in the shameful Peace Treaty and demanded that I be produced before a hostile tribunal. You, my dear Field Marshal, know me too well not to be aware that no sacrifice for my beloved fatherland is too great for me. Nevertheless, a tribunal in which the enemy alliance would be at once plaintiff and judge would be not an organ of justice, but an instrument of political arbitrariness, and would serve only, through the sentence which would inevitably be passed upon me, to justify subsequently the unprecedented peace conditions imposed upon us. Therefore, the enemy's demand naturally had to be rejected by me.
But, in addition, the idea of my being produced before a neutral tribunal, no matter how constituted, cannot be entertained by me. I do not recognize the validity of any sentence pronounced by any mortal judge whatsoever, be he never so exalted in rank, upon the measures taken by me most conscientiously as Emperor and King—in other words, as the constitutional, not responsible, representative of the German nation—since, were I to do so, I should thereby be sacrificing the honor and dignity of the German nation represented by me.
Legal proceedings having to do with guilt and punishment, instituted solely against the head of one of the nations which took part in the war, deprive that one nation of every vestige of equality of rights with the other nations, and thereby of its prestige in the community of nations. Moreover, this would cause, as a consequence, the impression desired by the enemy that the entire "question of guilt" concerns only this one head of a nation and the one nation represented by him. It must be taken into consideration, moreover, that a nonpartisan judgment of the "question of guilt" is impossible, if the legal proceedings are not made to include the heads and leading statesmen of the enemy powers, and if their conduct is not subjected to the same investigation, since it goes without saying that the conduct of the aforesaid one nation at the outbreak of the war can be judged correctly only if there is simultaneous consideration of the actions of its opponents.
A real clearing up of the "question of guilt," in which surely Germany would have no less interest than her foes, could be accomplished only if an international, nonpartisan tribunal, instead of trying individuals as criminals, should establish all the events which led to the World War, as well as all other offenses against international law, in order thereafter to measure correctly the guilt of individuals implicated in every one of the nations participating in the war.
Such an honest suggestion was officially made in Germany after the end of the war, but, so far as I know, it was partly refused, partly found unworthy of any answer at all. Furthermore, Germany, immediately after the war, unreservedly threw open her archives, whereas the enemy alliance has taken good care so far not to follow such an example. The secret documents from the Russian archives, now being made public in America, are but the beginning.
This method of procedure on the part of the enemy alliance in itself, combined with overwhelming damaging evidence coming to hand, shows where the "war guilt" is really to be sought! This makes it all the more a solemn duty for Germany to collect, sift, and make public, by every possible means, every bit of material bearing on the "question of guilt," in order, by so doing, to unmask the real originators of the war.
Unfortunately, the condition of Her Majesty has become worse. My heart is filled with the most grievous worry.
God with us!
Your grateful
(Signed) Wilhelm.
[CHAPTER XIV]
The Question of Guilt
History can show nothing to compare with the World War of 1914-18. It also can show nothing like the perplexity which has arisen as to the causes leading up to the World War.