At any rate I have done my best for you. How many times have I not bidden the faithful to fall down before you and worship you? Have I not proved from Holy Scripture that your lightest word is spoken, not by you, but by the Almighty; that you, in fact, are something higher and better in bones and flesh and blood and brains than anything that mere ordinary mortals can pretend to be? I can see you nodding your head in Imperial approval when such phrases came from me, and all the time I knew in my heart that the God of whom you were thinking, and to whose intimacy you pretended, was not the God under whom a Christian minister takes service, but a being formed after the image of a Prussian drill-sergeant who wears a pointed helmet and a turned-up moustache.
Sir, I have my doubts as to this fearful war in which we are engaged. You entered upon it, you say, to carry out your treaty obligations to Austria. Treaties, no doubt, are sacred things. But why, then, was not the treaty obligation to Belgium as sacred as that with Austria? Was it because Belgium was weak and (as you thought) defenceless that you invaded her country, slaughtered her people, and sacked her towns? Was this the reason for the foul treatment of Louvain? And is it agreeable, do you think, to the Almighty that the glorious Cathedral of Rheims should be bombarded and ruined even by German shells?
When the years have rolled on and you shall have been called away to render an account of what you did on earth, for what reasons will you be remembered amongst men? Not because you established justice and did good deeds—or even great ones—for your people, but because you plunged the world in war in order to feed your vanity, and laid waste Belgium and shattered the Cathedral of Rheims. Truly a shining memory.
Yours, in all humility,
Dryander.
BOER AND BRITON TOO.
General Botha (composing telegram to the Kaiser). "JUST OFF TO REPEL ANOTHER RAID. YOUR CUSTOMARY WIRE OF CONGRATULATION SHOULD BE ADDRESSED: 'BRITISH HEADQUARTERS—GERMAN SOUTH-WEST AFRICA.'"