I was not therefore surprised to find circulated in Paris an article by an American physician which I had permitted to be published in America at the outbreak of the war, showing the mental weaknesses and hereditary taints of Germany's war lord.
I recall him from memory of bygone years, and as I saw him in Berlin when his grandfather was still on the throne--a young man of about twenty, returning from the races and dashing through the Tiergarten holding the reins of six coal-black horses.
I said to myself: "That young man will cut a dash yet." And I still see, in higher light than before, those six coal-black horses--the horses of death.
Recently I read pages of his writings, speeches, and declarations, and there is not for the world an uplifting or new thought within them all.
What appears to be new is the echo of an age that was supposed to be long past--when might was rule and valor was religion.
"There is but one will, and that is mine," said the Kaiser, addressing his soldiers; but it has been the keynote to his diplomacy wherever it has appeared, either in pushing a commercial treaty on Russia in her hour of distress, forcing Italy into the Triple Alliance, or dictating the terms of the Austrian ultimatum to Servia, so that it would be impossible of fulfilment.
What is there of world-progress in the declaration of the present German Emperor, celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of the Kingdom of Prussia,-- "In this world nothing must be settled without the intervention of Germany and of the German Emperor.".