Norwich bulletin., 1917-07-19

France: The press and politicians 1T
 the empire itself are pretending tt
 to ride out the rising storm lot O poor bureaUcrats are thrown over l board.
 In Germany there can be no cabine' crises like those which the British and French have.> for there Is no Ger. man cabinet. There is only the kali ser, and ministers are but his ser wants or his orderlies- If things are botched, the tools are not to blame 1 but the master and his design are al | fault. The critics who are belaborins | Hollweg, Zimmerman and the rest o1 l the imperial underlings we'll know | that they are pounding His Majesty | himself, the All Highest.
 | First Act in the Revolution. l This is characteristic of revolutions
 In the opening scene. the old fiction | that the king can do no wrong still | is kept up, and scapegoats and Jonahs | are the first sacrifices to the people, | wrath.
 At Concord and Bunker Hill the l Americans were not yet fighting George III, but only his false advis- CTS, the ministers. In France, Turgot, | Necker. Calonne and Brienne were | thrown to the whale, but without sav- | ing Louis XVI from ultimate respon- | sibility and from the penalty of his | errors.
 As in France, so it was in Russia | last winter on the eve of the revolu- | tion. Sturmer, Rasputin and various but when the opposition had proved to the nation that no change of su- bordinates could work a change in the czar himself, the time had come to overturn the throne.
 But this analogy must not be fol- | lowed too closely. William II is nei- | ther a Louis XVI nor a Nicholas II. ! Nor are the Bourbons and the Roman Hohenzollerns, one of the ablest, most patriotic and most respected dynaSties in all the long story of kinds. Can He Save His Crown? If the kaiser should make up his mind to turn democrat, go in for popular suffrage and surround himself i with a cabinet responsible to the rep | resentatives of the nation, he could out thunder the Napoleon. And Will liam may be smart enough to have a revolution of his own.
 Yet no one and no measures can do more than postpone the popular revo- iution which is on the way No peo- pie ever have been free until they freed themselves. Although by call ing on the telephone the lesser mon arChs in the empire, William could amend the constitution in half an i hour to meet the demands of his crit i ics, he could as quickly change it again when the excitement had subsided. Whoever makes a constitution can un- make it. And it is not among the probabilities of human nature that the kaiser would long be content to serve as a f1gurehead or a rubber stamp. This is a revolt" exclaimed Charles \ of France in 1880. Sire a candid adviser corrected the last of the Bour- mons, 'it is a revolution"
 The kaiser has come out for little ballot reform, which would leave the autocracy intact. But Germany is moving irresisdbIy toward a revolu- ton. Not necessarily toward a vio- lent revolution nor toward a repub- lie.
 4 mere change in the government possibly may delay but it cannot de- feat this movement. Kaiser or no kali ser there must come, and before peace can come, a change in the very sys- tenn of government
 William offers the people the ballot but does not propose to make the gov eTnment responsible to the electorate.
 This is only bread pill and a more drastic dose will have to be adminis- tered. The body polite must be purged of autocraCy.
 To save his crown, the kaiser in the end will have to surrender to the na- tion the scepter of power He may manage to cling to his throne, but kaiserism must go.
 It may be possible to "can the kais- err by simply soldering him up, by sealing him up. But all experience
 
 not be preserved in democracy. As England had to get rid of the Stuarts an dchoose new line of kings before the realm could be made safe for dem- it's faith to a democratiZed Germany while the throne is held by the Hohenzo1Ierns. with their heritage of MachiaveIliI1 cvnicism bequeathed by Frederick the Great and Bismark. Train All Guns On kaiserism. At the same time, the allied nations should unite in the assurance that they are not waring against a man. or a family. and least of all, against a people We are fighting to destroy a system by which. Maximilian liar den said the other day, the peace of the world is subject to the will of a single mortal
 Fortunately the allies are preparing even now to reshape their terms of peace, under the influence of demo- cratic Russia and America. Unfortunately many Old World leaders do not vet share our simple New World faith in democracy as a sovereign remedy for the disea SC which has prostrated civilization. But this is natural enough; the principle never has been fairly been put to the test over there.
 Both Lloyd George and Premier Ri- bot failed in their latest speeches to lay full emphasis the conflict as a war TOT democracy. 1ney treated Ih1S rather as an incidental phase of the matter and it formed but frail and narrow plank in the platform they constructed. hardly broad and strong enough for them to stand on with both feet. Neither sighted his. big gun with a single eye and aimed at a single ob- ject. but both continued to scatter their fire. They still are unable to see the war wholly through demo- cratic glasses, to visualize it a struggle for the overthrow of kaiser ism and for nothing else.
 This was cannot be won as a war for conquest and reprisa1s. Revolution ary Russia had made that fact plain. The war can be won only as a war for a democratic peace. And even if it were possible to win a military peace, it would be only a military truce.
 Our friends. the allies, wish to crush Prussian militarism. But how can 1t be crushed except by democracy? It is Yankee guess that you might as we'll try to suppress Vesuvius by sitting on top of it to attempt to crush Prussian militarism with the military autocracy remaining under