The Ocala evening star., 1915-01-23
FORCED THE SWORD
INTO HIS HAND

AL 1AHE1AStA W1AkG1t <11G1GLGA O1O1-
ley, argues the case of the Kaiser
and against his own countrymen as
follows:
The Kaiser has always been, and is
today, a man of peace. He has in
deed lived up to the maxim 81 Wis pa
Gem, para bellum and, loaded with
the legacy of hate which the impoli-
tic annexation of Alsace-Lorraine had
thrust upon his shoulders, he could do
no less without offering the breast of
Germany to the ravisher.
In hundred crises he kept his
head; he kept the peace. He had plen-
ty of chances ITO smash France for
ever; he did not take them.
It would have been easy to. destroy
the Russian menace at the time when
Japan was straining the sinews of the
Tartar giant, or when the Moscow
Revolution showed that the Tsar could
not trust his own soldiers, and the I'm
perial Guard, hastily summoned from
st. Petersburg shut up the garrison
of Moscow in the Kremlin, trained
their own guns upon them, and dis
armed them. The Kaiser did nothing.
And then came the Triple Entente.
Germany was he'd like a deer in
lions jaws. Austria her only friend,
was being ruined by insidious poll
tics even more surely than by open
attacks. Barred in the Adriatic, bar
red in the Baltic, the Teuton had but
one small strip of reasonably open
coast. That the Kaiser made that
the greatest naval base in the world
was held to be menace"
Surely the Russo-Japanese war and
the Boer war showed plainly-if any
fool there were who could not see
it a priori-that the greatest, widest,
best and only impregnable military
base is the sea. Today we can bring
Russian troops from Vladivostock or
ArchangeI and land them at 0stend,
million at a time, and Germany
must be well served indeed by spies
if she knows Of the operation in time
to guard against it. Such a power
is the supreme strategic advantage.
Is it then so treacherous and aggres-
sive If Germany, threatened by an al
lance (hyprocritically described as
en- ententel of powers out numbering
her by six TO one, sought to keep open
a path to rad that universal base of
operations
From Vercingetorix to Wilhelm /,
Germany, as Germany, hardly could
claim victory. Even today it is mil
itary Prussia which drags Bavaria
art-lover, and all the peasant provin-
ces, to war. And all the might of the
Junker and his fierceness and his
bravery and. his aristocratic prestige
could never do it, but for the root
fact which every German feels; that,
unarmed he would be the norsel of a
moment for the Russian octopus, or
the toy to grasp and shatter of some
warrior schoolboy like Caesar or Ma
poleon.
And since the Entente the ordeal Of
the Kaiser has been Promethean. In
suit after insult he has had to swal-
low; injury upon injury he has had to
endure. The Kiao-Chau adventure,
: harmless and rational, was baked
then sterilized, then counterpoised
The colonies did not prosper. England
built like maniac against his navy;
Churchill deliberately pulled his nose
by the impudent proposal for linita-
ton of arguments.
Agadir was a fresh humiliation; fol
q few acres Of uninhabitable jungle or
the Congo he had to surrender all in
terest in Morocco, a country he had
nursed for years.
The last straw was the Balkan war
Blotted was his one hope of escape te
the East; his ewe-lamb, Turkey, was
torn to pieces before his eyes, and he
could not stir finger to prevent it
Austria still blocked in the Adriatic
Italy alienated from the Triple Al
lance, the Slav expanding every
where, Constantinople itself threaten
ed, Roumania (even) turning TOWARD
Russia, he must have felt like a vic
tim of that maiden of armour an6
spears that once executed justice OF
the weak What was his only sue
cess? The formation of the kingdom
Of Albania kingdom pour rire, {
kingdom la Gilbert and Sullivan
Prince William of Wied less like I
cat on hot bricks than like a SDider OF