I have set down this little story just as it was told to me, and it is only since the outbreak of the war, when the mainsprings of German motives are revealed at Armageddon, that it has occurred to me how perfectly it resolves itself into allegory. To the world at large, but to the Briton especially, is there no suggestion in what the Kaiser did to the tree, which for a hundred years or more had shadowed his tardily stumbled-upon look-out, of what he planned to do to the Empire which he had so often intimated had crowded him out of his ‘place in the sun’? With the tree he hewed off a sun-obscuring limb, and the unbalanced, mutilated remnant succumbed to the first storm that assailed it. Was not this the procedure that he reckoned upon following with the ‘obscuring limbs’ of the British Empire?
The foregoing instance of the extravagant vanity of the Kaiser Baron Y—— told more in amusement than in censoriousness, but I recall another little story to much the same point that he related with hard eyes and the shade of a frown, as one man speaks of another who has not quite ‘played the game’ in sport or business. It, also, had to do with an imperial hunt.
‘As you doubtless know,’ he said, after telling me something of how creditably the Kaiser shot, considering his infirmity, ‘a strenuous endeavour is always made on these occasions that the best game be driven up to the rifles of royalty, a custom which none of the Hohenzollerns have ever had the sporting instinct to modify in favour of even the most distinguished visitors. By some chance on the day in question, a remarkably fine boar ran unscathed the gauntlet of the imperial batteries and fell—an easy shot—to my own bullet. It was a really magnificent trophy—the brute was as high at the shoulder as a good-sized pony, and his tusks curved through fully ninety degrees more than a complete circle—and it had occurred to me at once that it was in order that I should at least offer to make a present of the head to my royal host. Frankly, however, I really wanted it very badly for my own hall, and I can still recall hoping that the Kaiser would “touch and remit, after the manner of kings,” as Kipling puts it.’
The Baron was silent for a few moments, staring hard in front of him with the look of a man who ponders something that has rankled in his mind for years. ‘Well,’ he resumed presently, ‘the Kaiser did “touch” (in the sense the Yankees use the term, I mean), but he did not “remit.” When we came to group for the inevitable after-the-hunt photograph, I was dumbfounded to see a couple of the imperial huntsmen drag up my prize, not in front of me, where immemorial custom decreed it should go, but to the feet of the Kaiser. He even had the nerve to have the photograph taken with his foot on its head. You have shot big game yourself, and you will know, therefore, that this would convey to any hunter exactly the same thing as his writing under the photograph, “I shot this boar myself.”’
The Baron took a long breath before resuming. ‘I need not tell you how surprised and angry I was, and I will not tell you what it took all the self-control I had to keep from doing. What I did do, I flatter myself, would have been thoroughly efficacious in bringing home to any other man in this world the consummate meanness of the thing he had done. The moment the photograph was finished I stepped up to the Kaiser and, controlling my voice as best I could, said: “Your Majesty, I beg you will deign to accept as a humble token of my admiration of your prowess as a hunter and your courtesy as a host the fine boar which my poor rifle was fortunate to bring down to-day.”
‘I still think that my polite sarcasm would have cut through the armour of any other man on earth. It was impossible to mistake my meaning, and he must have known that every man there knew it was my boar that he had had his picture taken with and was still coolly keeping his boot upon. Possibly he decided in his own mind, then and there, that the time had come to extend the “Divine Right of the Hohenzollerns” to the hunting field. At any rate, he bowed graciously, thanked me warmly, and, pointing down to where I had stood in the picture, said he presumed it was “that little fellow with the deformed tusk.”
‘My head was humming from the shock of the effrontery, but I still have distinct recollection of the deliberate sang-froid of the Kaiser’s manner as he directed someone to “mark that little boar with a twisted tusk, a gift from my good friend, Baron Y——, for mounting as a trophy.” I was a potential regicide for the next week or two, but my sense of humour pulled me up in the end. For, after all, what is the use of taking seriously a man who, for the sake of tickling his insatiate vanity by having his photograph taken with his foot on the head of a bigger pig than those in front of his hunting guests, commits an act that, were he anything less than an Emperor, would stamp him with every one of them as an out-and-out bounder? The memory of the thing makes me “see red” a bit even to-day if I let my mind dwell on it at all, but mingling with my resentment and mortification there is always a sort of sneaking admiration for the way the Kaiser (as the Yankees say) “got away with the goods.” The Hohenzollern—the trait is as evident in the Crown Prince as it is in his father—will always go forward instead of backward when it comes to being confronted with the consequences of either their bluffs or their breaks, and it is about time that the people in Germany, as well as the people outside of Germany, got this fact well in mind when dealing with them.’
These words were spoken before the Kaiser backed down when his Agadir bluff was called, but, generally speaking, I think the action of both father and son since then has been eloquent vindication of their truth.
Another noble German of my acquaintance who had at one time been on terms of exceptional intimacy with the Kaiser was the wealthy and distinguished Baron von K——, who, in the two decades previous to the outbreak of the war, had divided his time about equally between his ancestral castle on the Rhine and a great Northern California ranch brought him by his wealthy American wife. I met him first at a house-party in Honolulu about ten years ago, and at that time he appeared to take considerable pride in his friendship with the Kaiser, of whom he was wont to speak often and sympathetically. Since then I have encountered him, now in America, now in Europe, on an average of once a year, and on each succeeding occasion I noticed a decreasing warmth on his part, not so much for Germany and the Germans, for whom he still expressed great affection, but rather toward the Kaiser and his policies. It must have been fully seven years ago that he told me, at the Lotus Club in New York, that the mad race of armaments in which Germany was setting the pace for the rest of Europe could only end in one way—a great war in which his country would run a risk of losing far more than it had any chance of winning.
It was not long after this that I heard that Baron von K—— had returned hurriedly and unexpectedly from Germany to America, taking with him his two sons who had been at school there. I never learned exactly what the trouble was, but a friend of his told me that it had some connection with an effort that had been made to induce the youngsters to become German subjects and join the army, flattering prospects in which were held out to them. Von K—— is said to have declared that the boys should never be allowed to set foot in Germany again. Whether this latter statement is true or not, it is a fact that neither of the lads has ever since crossed the Atlantic, and that both are now at Harvard.