Omaha daily bee., 1919-07-07
No V1carl0us Atonenaeat
From the St. Louis Globe Democrat.

We do not think it at all probable that the
allied and associated powers will agree to DR..
Won Bethmann Hollweg's proposal that he be
placed on trial for the ofenses of the German
imperial government instead of the former
kaiser. There is little doubt that the scrap OF
paper" chancellor wilrbe held to answer for his
share in the official acts which the world long
since condemned, but he will not be permitted
to take the sins OF his chief upon his shoulders
"As former German imperial chancellor" he
says, Il bear for my period of Office sole re-
sponsihility, as regulated in the German consti-
tuition, for the political acts of the emperor"
1t is true that the kaiser, under the constitution
was not held responsible for his public pri-
vate acts. By article II of the constitution the
chancellor was made the responsible head of
whose office it was to countersign the DEGREES
and ordinances Of the kaiser and thereby
sumo the responsibility that could not be laid
upon the emperor because of the sacredness of
his person and his supreme elevation above
other men.
But it is hardly conceivable that the allied
and associated powers will base their action
upon this subterfuge of the German constitution.
They will consider the fact that the constitution
made the kaiser the actual head of the German
empire, and put into his hands the autocratc
powers over its government and people that
enabled him to direct their course in accordance
with his personal will. They cannot recognize
the fiction of divine ordination and superiority
to law 1t was against that idea that they fought.
The downfall of the autocracy that the kaiser
embodied as well as represented was one of the
chief aims of the war. The government of which
he was the supreme head has been abolished and
the kaiser himself is all exile, but Won Beth
mann-Holweg would raise up the ghost of the
German constitution, with its pretense of an ir-
responsible ruler who at the same time all
powerful, and plead its provisions in support of
his request that he be allowed to sacrifice him
self as a full substitute for his august master.
If William II had been such man as his father
and his chancellor such man as Bismarck the
blame for the war and its atrocities might very
we'll have been laid upon the subordinate in
rank, but since Bismarck, says German his
torian, the kaiser has always appointed chan
cellors who were more or less willing to carry
out his personal policies. The chancellors. as
whole have been his tools" And Price Collier
writing in 1912 said Here is man who in a
of nation that when you touch it anywhere you
touch him, and when you think of it from any
angle of thought or describe it from any point
of view you find yourself including him
1t is not possible for the world to think of
such man as an irresponsible hgurehead. The
constitution of the empire gave him supreme
power, and he used it constantly and domlneer
ingly Every utterance of his was an express
sion of the arrogant declaration of Louis XIV,
II am the state" There is sufficient evidence
that he was the directing chief in the conspiracy
to set the war in operation for the achievement
of deliberate purposes, and that he approved if
he did not order the atrocities which accom-
for the kaiser. of Germany. Whatever may be
the guilt of the chancellor it is the guilt of a.
subordinate. William II is the symbol of all
that is hateful in the record that Germany has
made in this war, and he must be held person.
ally responsible for all that he did