Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1918-11-11
CONTEMPT OF THE AGES
FOR KAISER IN HISTORY
Worlds Annals Likely to Mark Him Most-Deested Figure
of All Chronicles For His Outrdges of Land and Sea

, tics of the Kaiser to serve as back
ground; his egotism, his me" and
"Gott" theology, his professed love
for his army and navy.
Concerning his early life. little
need be said. He was born January
81, 1859, in Berlin. When his father
Frederick, died, William IL ascended
the throne June Is, 1888.
One of the first acts of the new
emperor was to demand the resigna-
ton of Chancellor Bismarck and so
free himself from the man who had
dominated the reign of the first Will
liam. The Iron Chancellor never
was replaced, except by succession
of figureheads. The Kaiser thence
forth was the ruler, and the chan
cellors and the Reichstag were pup
pets. When William accepted the
resignation of his grandfather's pilot,
he intimated that the Hohenzollerns
weer ordained of God. Thus came
the creation of that startling ana
chronism of the twentieth century,
the divine right of kings" which
most of the rest of the world had
discarded a century before.
Turned Children to War
Prior to 1914 his reign will be
remembered chiefly for his encour-
to solve the labor problem, and
the establishment of a socialized
autocracy. In the first of these he
was successful in imposing on the
rising generation his ideas of mill
| tary domination. In the second he
was unsuccessful, for despite his
helping the workmen he turned
them into Socialists who clamored
for reforms, particularly in represen-
tation in the Reichstag, and the free
people of the world doomed the
third.
But it is with the Kaiser's career
since 1914 that the world is inter-
ested especially. In the first few
months of the war he was quite in
conspicuous. He made a few
speeches to his army, made prepa-
rations for his hoped-for triumphal
entry into Paris but. aside from these
kept to the rear. With his six sons
he was shielded from harm. When
every household in the German en-
pire had one or more of it's members
killed or wounded, the imperial fam
lily suffered nothing.
To Americans especially, who re-
membered the gracious sympathy of
Lincoln as evidenced in the BiXby
letter, the attitude of the kaiser to-
WdTu lIle DeTedNeu NTeIIlldn ldllllllSS
always came as a shock. One eX-
ample will suffice.
Consolation of Bombast
When the Count Won Room, Ger
man nobleman, had lost his fifth son
in the war the kaiser sent the fol-
lowing telegram to him:
II think of the deep sorrow that
had previously fallen on you by the
death of your wife and also of your
four sons fallen in battle, and eX-
press my warmest sympathy in this
new loss to you and your sons wild
ow. May your pain be soothed by
the certainty that the German peo-
pie are proud of the fathers and
sons who, to the honor of their IA
nous names, willingly sacrifice their
lives for the fatherland. May God
stand by you with His consolation" )"
Contrasted with this are the words
of Lincoln in the familiar letter that
critic has likened to a calm monu-
ment of grief. In Lincoln's words of
coincidence were genuine sorrow; in
the kaiser's, the expression of graft