Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1918-12-03
The Ex-Kdiset- at the Bar.

= T the Allies insist that the ex-Kaiser be |
delivered to them for due reckoning, the
Dutch Government is unlikely to stand |
out in refusal. There is nothing enviable in
harboring the most detested criminal of the
times. Any sensitiveness whatsoever to
world opinion must cause the people of Hol-
land to resent the continued presence of the
Potsdam fugitive who thrust himself upon
them; and as they feel. so probably will
their Government act, regardless of legal
technicalities. It is doubtful indeed, if in
all Europe there is a neutral nation so in
different TO public judgment as to cOnnive
with the unspeakable Hohenzollern. As Tai
leyrand declared more than a 1tury ago of
one infinitely greater than this pinchbeck
/ Napoleon from Berlin, he has put himself
without the pale of civil and social relations,
and as an enemy and disturber of the tran
quillity of the world he has rendered himself
liable to public vengeance
AS the crowned and self-proclaimed head
of the power that schemed and precipitated
/ the war. the eX-Kaiser is peculiarly respon-
! sible to outraged civilization, and punish
ment judicially administered upon him would
carry a peculiarly impressive moral. Said
this same Hohenzollern when he was en-
peror:
"Only one is master in this country.
That is l. Who opposes me, / will
crush to pieces. All of you have only
one will, and that is my will; there is
only one law, and that is my law"
1t is no extenuation of the tyrant's guilt to
plead that he was surrounded with evil coun-
selors Numbers of these, no doubt, were
his superiors in mind power and his equals
in crime. For that matter, the entire Pots
dam gang is indictable, and those response
BILE for such crimes as the murder of Captain
Fryatt and of Edith Cavell, the wanton de-
struction of property, the sinking of unarmed
ships and the slaughter of civilians should be
brought to a strict personal accounting. But
how can the fact thai he had accomplices ex-
culpate the chief criminal? Whatever penal
ties may be exacted of the others and Of the
German nation in its entirety, justice will not
have been done until the autocrat who
sprung the trigger of this murderous bust
ness is made to pay. He it was who spoke
the decisive word for war when he, and he
alone, could have spoken the decisive word
for peace There were many hands in the
plot by which Germany set the stage for her
black ambition, but at the crucial moment it
was the Kaiser who acted-he who had pro- |
claimed himself his cOuntry's lone master" |
and 'only law"
Shall one with this guilt upon his head |
go unwhipt of justice? Shall he who turned |
deaf ear to the pleadings of peace; he who |
instigated barbarities unknown since the |
scourge of Attila; he, the supernatural, in !
L.
stroyed holy temples of art and worship and |
defiled living temples of sacred chastity; he
who has cursed the world, his own subjects !
included, with woes unexampled since the fall |
of marshall he be left at large to live POM
pously upon his hidden gold and lay new |
plots for return to power? If there be no |
precedents for the extradition and punish
ment of 2 criminal like this, then precedent
should be m"de forthwith. But it should not |
be difficult to find all the law needful by
turning to the Ten Commandments, nor all |
the warrant needful by appealing to the con-
science of mankind.
William HohenzolIern should be punished, |
not for the sake of public vengeance" but |
for the sake of public security. Vengeance,
we well may leave to the Great Judge whose
COuEI cNSIidsIluS uuIO SNSildSNlHS'
But duty to the law of nations and to the in
terests of human society demands that he
who has defed them and trampled them
down shall be brought to present and prac-
teal accounting. On the same principle that
cities and states punish the ordinary male
factor, knowing that it would be destructive
of their peace and their very existence to let
violations of the law pass without correction,
against the code of civilization should be
brought to book. Elsewise as Premier Lloyd
George has said, there will be one justice
for the poor wretched criminal and another
for kings and emperors." AS the responsible
head of the German Empire and its military
forces, William Hohenzollern deliberately, in
instances beyond number, ordered per-
mitted acts that he knew we're forbidden un-
down in treaties to which his Government
was signatory-acts that put him beyond the
pale of military prerogative or necessity and
branded him a wilful murderer. What crime,
the ex-kaiser is not guilty, either as princi-
pal or as accessory before or after the fact?
And what sort of equity would it be to exact
indemnities from the German masses (as ex-
acted they certainly should be- yet leave the
arch criminals-the Hohenzollern and his
crew--free from the laws lash? In justice
to the present and the future. let them be