The Goldfield news and weekly tribune. [volume] (Goldfield, Nev.) 1911-1947, 1918-04-06
A ROYAL pROpAGANDIsTs sCREED

The current issue of the Literary Digest has a few highly
amusing excerpts from an article contributed to the Berlin
Nord und Sund, by Duke Ernst Guenther. The duke is no less
a parsonage than the kaiser's brother-in-law, being a brother
to the kaiser's wife. In Germany he is known as Heir to Nor
way, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, Count of Sherman and the
Ditmarshes, and Duke of Oldenburg."
In looking around for a subject big enough to write about
he chose our country and our president, and he labeled his
article American Morality" And then His Royal Giblets gets
"al het up" because the president "dares to express his moral
indignation about German conditions and to speak OF the nfiu-
ence which the monarchy exercises on other peoples" Russia
is the only country, he says, where corruption is on a par with
corruption in America, where, he says, 'the American money
magnate is without shame. Every one of them has his two
senators and several members of congress in his pocket"
And the kaiser's royal brother-in-law says this us so usual
that nothing is thought of it." And he vouches for the fact
that Wilson knows all about it and has yet the face to castigate
Germany. And then this royal brother-in-law of an emperor
who decorated and otherwise honored the author of the now in
famous "Song of Hate" that became a part of the music OF the
schools and even of the state supported churches in a country
where hate placed ten muskets in the hands of ten soldiers and
commanded them to fire on a Red Gross nurse, Edith Cavelle;
where schools recessed and business stopped to afford the PEG.
pie an opportunity to properly rejoice over the drowning OF
women and children when the Lusitania went down-this be-
nign parsonage proceeds to tell us:
1--WE Germans do not hate like the Latin races. Hate
is foreign to our nature, but l am sure that were a refer
endum of the German people taken today as to the man
thew most detest there would be a unanimous vote for
President Wilson. He might have kept the
peace of the world, but instead Of that he allowed him
self to become the creature of the Morgan trusts. He
succumbed to plutocratic influences In their most fright
full form"
Well, Ernst, the "plutocrats" in this country are paying out
dollars on account of the war where they are taking in dimes
how about the plutocrats and the autocrats of your own un-
happy land? And are you, like your royal brother-ln-laW, also
a stakeholder in Krupps?
And further says this royal critic of our republics:
81 do not believe that one in a thousand American
citizens has the slightest knowledge of the German con-
stitution or he would know that the imperial suffrage is
more democratic than that of America and that the
reichstag is not hampered by a senate. Under these cir
uprtono how 6Qrp h ppS0pO nose before GermAnV
as a leader of democracy and a moral preacher! were
he not the leader of so huge a country we might regard
him as just a political mountebank."
Yes. Ernst. we have read the German constitution and the
calculations of it by the German university professors VINO
came to us as missionaries or emissarles OF German kultur,
and even they will blush to read your diatribe. Even they tell
us that your royal brother-in-law can set aside any decision OF
your highest court; that by virtue of his Prussian kingship no
word of the constitution can be changed without his consent.
Your imperial suffrage" is limited to males of twenty-five
years and over, and your popular legislative body is elected on
a basis of population as it stood in 1874, forty seven years ago.
True, your reichstag is mot hampered by a senate" chosen by
the people, but it is hampered by a bundesrat chosen by the
kaiser as king of Prussia and by the kings and princes OF the
other states. and they can veto anything your reichstag can do.
But probably those Americans you complain OF as not hav-
ing read your constitution, Ernst, will be interested in a couple
of recent German interpretations of it rather than the Tribune's
Interpretation. Here is one about four months old, given us
yesterday by Mr.. Gerard, our last ambassador to Germany.
II is reflected in a resolution unanimously adopted by the Con-
servative Union of the Province of Brandenburg, in opposition
to the much-talked-of reform of the franchise. Maybe you
helped frame it, Ernst. Here it is:
"The Prussian state, fundamentally a people of its
princes, is the foundation on which the German empire
rests.
"No sovereignty of the people, but kingship by Divine
right is it's cornerstone.
1--WE implore our deputies to do their best to prevent
the kingship being debased into a sham kingship and
being replaced by that sovereignty of the people by
means of the alteration of the Prussian franchise"
And hortly before we got into this war a German named
Kuepper. as postmaster of the PruSSian town of Wirme1kirch-