That's what I'm supposed to be saying, and you thought you heard me all the way from Potsdam, and you took a good deep think, and "Bless me," you said, "it's ten thousand pities to let old man Friedlicher go along with his mind empty when there's a heap of good German opinions lying around just asking to be put into it. I'll cable Bernstorff to fill him up." So there's poor Bernstorff turning himself inside out to please you and educate me. Don't he prove a lot? From 9 to 10 he lectures about Germany's love for America and the beautiful statue of Frederick the Great at Annapolis; from 10 to 11 he socks it into England—says she's a robber power and blacker'n any of the niggers she hires to do her fighting for her; from 11 to 12 he settles Russia by calling her a barbarian Empire; and from 12 to 1 he tells me how Germany's burning Belgium for Belgium's good; and then he dismisses me and says, if I'll come back to-morrow morning, he'll pitch me a story about the French peril, and how Germany can help America to escape it.
Kaiser, it's no good. My father was a German, and he knew your lot, and he used to tell me all he knew. He had to quit Prussia pretty quick after 1848—that's the year your great-uncle had to take off his hat to the citizens of Berlin, and your venerable grandfather had to pay a visit to England, German air not being good for his health. I know all that there is to be known about you. I don't want any Bernstorff, no, nor yet any Dernburg, to tell me why this fight's fighting and to explain the Belgian wickedness to me. You and your blamed professors and soldiers, you've all been spoiling for war these ten years past, and now that you've got it you're out to tell the Americans that the other fellows drove you into it. All I've got to say is, I don't believe it—and what's more, no sensible American believes it either. That's all there is to it.
Yours sincerely,
Dietrich.
Motto for the Kaiser (reported as having been last seen at Cologne): "East, West, hame's best."
