The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1918-06-11
Open Letter To
The Kaiser
To william of HOhenzOllern, Murder
er, Rapist and Destroyer of De.
fenseless Women and Children

us with any such character as yours
You are the chief directing cause OF
more crime, more murder, rape, ar
son, starvation, cruelty, lying, per-
jury, destruction dissertation, desola-
ton and despair than all the so-called
kings and conquerors that have gone
before, or ever will come after you.
You, in the estimation of the world
outside of Germany, make Timour
Tamerlane, Attila, Alaric, Xerxes, Da-
RUS, Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar, Ma
ipoleon, Nero, Coligula and Tiberius
and other destroyers of human life,
honor, soul and property, seem small
and puny by comparison. You have
killed more men, women and children
in one day than the Tartars or Goths
killed in 100 years. Compared to At
tia, your model, the "Scourge Of
Cod" you are as a forest fire famed
by a cyclone compared to the fitful
flame of parlor match that may be
extinguished by breath.
The path of your destruction has
circled the world The terror of your
sword has spread from the most
eastern point in Siberia to the most
western point in Alaska; from far
Australia to farther Kamschatka. Men
of all races and of all blood, Germans
among them hate your very name.
From the borders of Prussia to the
ends of the earth men are rushing to
destroy you. The New ealander,
the Malay, the Filipino, the Fijians,
the TERRA Del Fuegians, the black
Australian and the red American. the
Patagonian, the Uruguayan, the Man
chu, the Alma are rushing to join the
Briton, the Gaul, the Latin and the
White American in the glad labor of
your destruction. One billion, fou"
hundred and eighty thousands of per-
sons, practically every human being
not Of German blood and many human
beings of German blood pray every
day that the House of Hohenzollern
and all that it stands for shall be
wiped from the earth.
No creature, living or dead, has ev-
ell inspired one one-thousandth part
of the hatred that you have inspired.
You will, if the world is not in error.
hold unique place in history as the
most hated of all things that have
lived to the 18th year of the Goth Gen.
fury A. D. and probably as the most
hated thing that ever will live. 1t is
impossible to conceive that any Great
ed or creatable thing can exceed you
in commission of crimes calculated to
excite human hatred and contempt.
How did you come to first imagine
and then evolve the almost unimagin.
able and almost unavoidable empire
CT crime which you are charged of
having inflicted upon the world?
What was your original idea? What
did you think? Had you any remote
idea that your forcing of war upon
the world would result in the ruin
which Europe faces today? Had you
any remote idea that of the 1900 600,
600 human beings of all sorts upon
the face of the earth 1,420.G00, 900
would hate your name, hate your
face, hate your soul and would be
willing to lay down every one of
their 1,42O,0O0,OO0 individual lives
rather than that your power should
prevail above one of them?
How do you go to sleep at night ?
Does the knowledge that you are ac-
cused of having already destroyed
100000 German lives upon the field
of battle and probably 100000 other
German lives as the direct result of
the war, destroyed the lives of 3,OO0,-
600 French, in and out of battle, of
100000 British, of 100000 Turks,
Armenians and Syrians, of probably
100000 Slavs in war as the direct
result of war, interfere with your
slumber?
Do the stumped arms of little chill
dren reach out to you in your
dreams? Do the horror-stretched
eyes of outraged women haunt you in
your sleep? Do the sons of Germany
whom you have doomed to death, as
surely as you have doomed the agon-
jzed Armenian or the hell-condemned
Belgian, reproach you in the dark
ness? Do the souls of unborn chill
dren cry to you at midnight as the
souls of their mothers cried when the
bayonets of your Prussians pierced
them? And do the myriad souls of
little children that might have been
born of the multitudes of young that
YOU have killed crowd about you in
the cleaning and cry:
! ooh, Kaiser! but for you we might
have had fathers and might have had
mothers and might have been born Of