“For two generations all seemed to be going well with the Germans. William I was a fairly decent-minded man. Bismarck was unscrupulous but careful. He stepped softly after he had bitten a chunk out of France. He held the throne in restraint until William, the Godful, jumped upon it with a wild yell of heavenly inspiration that startled the world. He was going to take no advice from Mr. Bismarck—not a bit! Right away he appointed himself secretary of war and attorney general of the Almighty. No such astonishing familiarity with omnipotence had been seen since the time of Moses.
“There is an ancient legend which says that, when Cæsar invaded Gaul, an old bowman of the north, having been captured and brought to the headquarters of the great Consul, said:
“'Hello, Julius! I am with you.'
“It was like Bill Hohenzollern, only Bill didn't say 'Hello, Julius!' The whole world stood aghast.
“Bismarck stepped down and out. He must have seen what was coming.
“Now this young lunatic should have been examined and condemned and sent to an asylum as a paranoiac. Instead of that, he was given full power and allowed to endow and develop a school of bribed historians and lunatic philosophers to justify his plans—-Treitschke, Nietzsche, Bernhardi, backed by the throne and all the supermaniacs that surrounded it. They created the new morality of Williamism in which all human decency was disemboweled and God and the devil exchanged crowns. Gosh almighty! It seems incredible now that we look back upon it.
“From the beginning there has been a flavor of the little tin god about these Hohenzollern fellers. Frederick the Great had a menacing rattle of self-assertion, like that of a Ford car going to a country picnic. His favorite dissipation was kicking soldiers. It was a way he had of advertising his superiority.
“Macaulay tells us that he needed proximity and not provocation to kick a soldier. What a brave Captain he was! Funny, isn't it, how the great Captains have managed to take care of themselves. Died on hair mattresses, every one of them except two, Gustavus Adolphus and Stonewall Jackson.
“The only man who ever insulted me by just shaking my hand was a mule-eared Hohenzollern chap known as Prince Heinrich of Prussia. I can never forget that you-to-hell air of his as he took my hand as if it was a clod of dirt, without even a look at me. I have always been sorry that I didn't invite him to the sidewalk.
“William II began to strut in the military and hot-air game as soon as he ascended the throne, and lost no opportunity to tighten his hold upon the consciences of his people.