The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-11-15
WILHELM PUT TO SHAME
THE KAISER SAVAGELY ATTACKED
IN A BOOK BY NEW JUNIUS.
Doubt Cast ON His Sanity, and He Is
Called BIunderer, Migrate and
Victim of Superstition


Berlin Letter IN chicago 11meS-f1eraIu.
A Junius. a German Junius. has come to
judgment. Like his English prototype. that
Inundated king, smashed ministries and
smirched statesmen and juristS, he writes
with a pen dipped in gall and sets down
words dripping venom. His mission is to
tear the veil from the figure of William of
Hohenzollern, to expose him to the jeers of
the German millions, to stab him with an
epigram, to slash him with a reproach, to
stun him with denunciation. In the eyes
of the great national public he has sue
ceeded in all this.
Otto Mittelstaedt is a name flashed into
every corner of Germany within this one
week. and Before the Deluge," his book,
is already in its seventh edition and the
copies still mounting up into the tens of
thousands. Germany seems to have been
looking for just such latter-day Junius,
and now halls him as the man of the hour.
His words, bitter as the wormwood, are .
sweet water to the thirsty; his onslaught
on the throne as welcome as a gale in
fog at sea. The book and its reception tell
more of conditions in Germany than all
else published in the last six years. To-
gether they take the young Emperor
measure weigh him in the balance and
register the verdict, found wanting" That
is why, since last Sunday, Before the
Deluge" has become famous from Yoko-
hama to San Francisco and from Cape
Town to the utmost limits of Scandinavia.
To appreciate this, read a sketch of the
six letters in which the German Junius dis
sects the young Emperor. He draws the
curtain on his analytical work in rapid but
well-de6ned succession.
excuse for the weakest and worst of rulers,
says this Junius, is that they meant well;
Recall Louis XVI James II and Joseph III
of Austria. They all could talk beautifully
of the great duties and responsibilities of
kings. Has William II done more? He
speaks far and near of his divine right and
divine mission. Has either part of this d.
vinity helped a minister or won over a
partisan? Take for example the Social
Democracy. 1t was approached at .hrst with
lordly condeScension by the Emperor; then
it was rebuffed with the laundering wrath
of the prophets At first the Emperor APP
peared as the gracious Almighty, hearing
to the plants of even his weakest children;
at last he has assumed the thunders ana
the lightnings reserved Tor the stlH-necked
and disobedient who refuse to benent by
the mercy and grace from on hlgh. Wnat
has been the result? His cOndescens1on in
creased the Social Democratic vote from
million to a million and a half. His wrath
increased it from a million and half TO
more than two millions. That is one pic
ture on which the modern Junius lifts the
cuptain, while an empire applauds.
WILLIAM THE MIGRATE.
Next behold William the migrate. This
young man had a great chancellor and
statesman says Junius, as the curtain goes
up again, showing the imperial victim at
the center of the stage. He was man OF
many faults, but had done wonders. For
twenty-eight years he had kept the house
of Hohenzollern from ruin. He had saved
it from the parliamentary yoke and put the
yoke on Parliament instead. He had car
ried it through three great wars success
fully, had doubled it's territory, had given
1t an imperial crown, had made it the SOW
ereign power of Europe's diplomacy. Yer
he was sent home over night, as II a mere
clerk in department. All the world Won
dered, but William II, floating in the thick
air of egotism and ignorance. merely merely re-
marked; I'VE shall go on as before; we
shall follow the old course And when
amid the quaking and decentralization OF Of
fetal life in Germany, the confusion OF min
isters and the collapse of policies, the young
man without gratitude gaZed supreme, over
the chaos, and had no word of reproof Tor
curse the departing friend of his fore
fathers, this man to whom he owed ms
crown and country, writes the new Jutlaus
was sent forth as an outlaw, an outcasl
of society to be the victim of the first SLAM
derer that might assail him.
Juniuss curtain rises next on William
the nuddler. There is a distinction between
muddling and laundering. laundering may
be the result of a false step. Muddnng Is
mere helpless fiounderlng. Ihus Junius ~,
PRODUCES William in the third role lie then
reviews the policies of the emperor win
a master hand. What, he asks, mas Deol
changed in the great outlines OF natlohal
poIicy? Nothing. Yearly, monthly, weekly
the Young Emperor has tumDled upon some
new project, has foundered out or the peat
en- track in pursuit OF II ana tnen mas
dropped back into the way lalu out py Dis
marck and the other emperors. Sometimes
he has been snubbed back sometimes
frightened back, sometimes pulled back,
hut the result has always been the same.
he has nut out feelers in London, Con-
stantinople Athens, Madrid, Paris, 81.
Petersburg and Vienna, yet IN not one OF
those places has he done more than raise
a c!oud of doubt as to what he wanted and
whittier he was tending. Rebuffed, rebuked,
snubbed defeated, he stood now exactly
where his grandfather stood, after having
agitated all Europe with his inexpllcable
gyrations Meantime Germany had suffered.
Chaos reigned at court; doubt ruled in the
Cabinet No man knew which way the EN-
peror would turn next. Consequently, min
lister after minister lost his reckoning and
retired in confusion. "BrOnsart Won Schel-
lendorff was the nineteenth. says the
Junius of Germany. "Since he fell we have
ceased counting But they are still falling
and will continue to fall"
MYSTIFIED BY THE KAISER
William, the mystic, is the next exhibit
that the Mittelstaedt curtain rises upon.
William l and Frederick III were men of
clear minds. They were intelligent and in
telligible. They had principles that could
be reckoned with, motives that appealed to
the understanding. Who can fathom Will
liam II? Who could penetrate the veil that
holds In the shadow the tangle of doubt,
vacillation. impulse and caprice mingled
with the instincts which lead man to ig-
more the facts of life and to peer out into
the region of the vast unknown and UNI
movable. In such an incalcuable mind,
the intrigues of the designing, the fiattery
Of the ignOble, the speculation of the fanat-
ical and the fantastic find their most fruit
full field There all things are possible. and
nobody can tell what the morrow will bring
forth
1t will be seen by all who read between
the lines that Junius of Germany is coming
as near as ne can under the press laws to
the declaration that William ii has an ill
balanced if not unbalanced mind; that he
is q creature of mystic religious supersu-
ton, and that he is verging on the mental
darkness that cost his greatuncle the throne
of Prussia.
So much for william. the blunderer. the
migrate the muddler and the mystic The
next and last time he lifts the curtain Nit
telstaedt calls to the German nation: BE.
hold now William the despot." 1t is
superfuous TO trace here the outlines Of