THE CONFEDERATES
"Did they believe that peace story in the Reichstag, Bethmann?"
"Yes, but the Allies didn't."
From time to time of late the Kaiser has posed as the champion of peace. His official spokesman, Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, has announced the Imperial readiness to stay the war—on his master's own terms, which he disdains to define precisely.
The Emperor and his advisers are involved in a tangle of miscalculations which infest the conduct of the war alike in the field of battle and the council-chamber. But no wild imaginings could encourage a solid hope that the Chancellor's peaceful professions would be taken seriously by anybody save his own satellites. Loudly the compliant Minister vaunted in the Reichstag his country's military successes, but he could point to no signs either of any faltering in military preparations on the part of the Allies, or of their willingness to entertain humiliating conditions of peace.
Even in Germany clear visions acknowledge that Time is fighting valiantly on the side of Germany's foes, and that peace can only come when the Central Powers beg for it on their knees.
It is improbable that the Kaiser and his Chancellor now harbour many real illusions about the future, although they may well be anxious to disguise even to themselves the ultimate issues at stake in the war. Their home and foreign policy seems to be conceived in the desperate spirit of the gambler. They appear to be recklessly speculating on the chances of a pacificist rôle conciliating the sympathy of neutrals. They count on the odds that they may convert the public opinion of non-combatant nations to the erroneous belief that Germany is the conqueror, and that further resistance to her is futile. But so far the game has miscarried. The recent German professions of zeal for peace fell in neutral countries on deaf or impatient ears. The braggart bulletins of the German Press Bureau have been valued at their true worth. Neutral critics have found in Bethmann-Hollweg's cry for peace mere wasted breath
The Chancellor and his master are perilously near losing among neutrals the last shreds of reputation for political sagacity.
SIDNEY LEE.