The Brattleboro daily reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1913-1955, 1919-04-09
cvEREsTIMATED HIMSELF.
Hohenzollern a Bumblepuppy in Com
garrison With Napoleon.

War is the gambling of kings Caesar,
Hannibal, Alexander, Frederick the Great,
Napoleon were areh-gamblers William
Hohenzollern was a gambler, but he was
not an arch-gambler. He thought Ire was,
and therein was the seed Of his undoing.
Like Napoleon, he thought he could deal
a hand with every monarch in Earope
and win out, inasmueh as the cards he
played with were marked But even the
arch-gambler Napoleon lost when he dealt
his cards to his cool, long-waiting British
adversary. The Hohenzollern lost when
he invited John Bull and Uncle Sam into
the game. But the Hohenzollern was a
bumblepuppy player compared with Ma
| pofeon- Only in one respect does the de-
feated kaiser resemble the Corsican con-
queror; Napoleon the Great was "a con
summate liar.
But even the great Corsiean made mis-
| takes. His most egregious mistake, the
mistake that eventually brought about
his rum, was the invasion of Russia. This
was mistake in psychology He was a
man of the Latin race, and the Latin race
has never understood the Slav Will it
i ever understand the Slav? Napoleon
thought that the Russians would act as
his enemies of the Latin race had acted
'sThey are savagess, he said. at is a
| barbaric and stupid instinct that makes
them destroy their own property for the
sake of hampering rs. As we approach
Moscow we shall find that the more civil
lied Of the inhabitants Of the villages, en-
ervated by an easy life, rendered selfish
by possession of wealth, will not abandon
their property, but win barter and sell to
us, and find themselves the victims of
our might. And the army believed him.
4 The soldiers of the Grand Army had SUI
perb faith in their leader and his star,
such a faith as is supposed to move noun
tains
; But Napoleon found that the further he
advanced into Russia the more willingly
the Russians destroyed their crops and
their property And when he arrived at
Moscow the city was in flames The peo-
pie had put the torch TO their own city.
He did not know that the Russians, for
all their lack of 'self-confdence, for all
their dreaminess and indecisveness, are
ideallsts and -fatalists. He did not know
that they would perform prodigious acts
of self-sacriiiee in order TO drive the in
yader from their marshes If Napoleon
had been a better psychologist he would
never have invaded Russia,
And if the kaiser had been a better
psychologist he would never have taken
: the chance of Americas entering the wan.
But he told his army that America could
never transport an army overseas. that
the 100000 Germans in the United States
would never permit this country TO &c
= to war with Germany And when the
: United States did put an army of l,5o0,00(
men ON French soil, the kaiser told his
: own soldiers that the American force wa,
: "a searecrow army And his army be
: lieved' him, as the French army, NOR,
2 than 100 years before, had believed Ma
, poleon. The army had always believed
!. the kaiser until that. day last s,Inms
= when two regiments of American marine
!, broke through an overwhelming force o
: Germans on the Marine and took th
: town of Chateau-Thierry, That was tn
J beginning of the end Of kaiserdom.--J
.. y. H.. in Rochester Post Express