Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1918-08-28
THE KAISER AS | KNEW
HIM FOR FOURTEEN YEARS
By ARTHUR N. DAVIS, S.
Copyright, 1915 by Mcclure Newspaper syndicae)

of US and we could keep it for our
selves-that Germany could control
the continent of Europe. England,
through her vast possessions ana
fleet, could control the Mediterran-
can and the Far East, and America
could dominate the Western Heml-
sphere.
How long it would have been be-
fore Germany would have tried to
wrest dominion from England can
readily enough be imagined, and
with the whole of Europe and the
Far East under her thumb. America
would undoubtedly have proved too
tempting a morsel for the Kaiser's
or his descendants rapacious NAV to
have resisted. He said that he be-
| lieved that the world was big
enough for three" he didn't say it
was too big for one.
| What was really in his mind,
however, is indicated by a passage
| in an address he made some twenty
! five years ago in which, as the Rev.
DR.. Newell Dwight Hills has point
ed out, he used these words:
From my childhood l have been
under the influence of five men
Alexander julius Caesar. Theodoric
II, Napoleon and Frederick the Great
These five men dreamed their dream
of world empire; they failed. l
am dreaming my dream of a world
empire, but l shall succeed"
The Kaiser's plan to dominate Eu-
rope included the control of Turkey,
and he made every effort to
strengthen that country so that she
might be valua BILE ally in the war
to come.
When Italy took Tripoli from Tur-
EnV hafnrn ha
toned to the Kaiser how oppor-
tunely Italy had acted but the Kaiser
dismissed my remark with an excla-
nation of displeasure. realizing. of
course, that Turkeys loss was in a
sense his own, since he had planned
to make Turkey his vassal.
To that end he had sent German
offlcers to train the Turkish army
and had supplied them with guns
and munitions. With an eye to the
future, too, he had constructed the
great Bagdad Railway.
When the Balkan war broke out
IN 1912 the Kaiser had great con-
hdence that the German-trained
Turkish army would acquit itself
creditably and that in the outcome
Eor that conflict his European pro-
gram would make considerab BILE prog
ress He told me that he had a map
or the war area placed in his motor
and that with pegs he followed the
fortunes of the fighting armies while
he was travelling.
The Turkish defeats were natural
ly a great disappointment to him.
These Montenegrins, Servians and
bulgarlans are wonderful fighters" F."
ne confessed to me. shortly after
the war began. "They're out-of-
| door nannIa
strength and stamina which fighters
require. If they keep on the way
they're going they'll be in Constan-
tinople in week. Confound those
Turks! We furnished them guns
and ammunition and trained their
officers, but if they won't fight, we
can't make them. We've done our
best!"
The defeat of the Turks Iessened
their value to the Kaiser as an ally
and he Immediately put into effect
measure for increasing the Ger
man army from $4,000 to 900 900
10 restore the balance of power,
they said. For this purpose a
"Wehrbeitrag," or increased arma-
ment tax. was levied on capital and
incidentally, I was informed that /
would have~to pay my share. The
idea of paying tax to upbuild the
German army. which was already so
powerful that it menaced the peace
of the world, did not appeal to me
at all and I spoke to Ambassador
Gerard about it. He advised me to
pay it under protest, agreeing with
me that there was no reason why an
American should be required to con-
tribute to the German war budget.
However, I had to pay it.
| The German efforts ar ooIapiza
ton. which were more or less of a
failure because the Germans refus-
ed to inhabit the German posses
sions, and the measures adopted TO
conquer the commercial markets of
the world were an important part of
the program of world domination