The Blot on the Kaisers Scutcheon | Page 5

Now why did the Kaiser over and over again proclaim his allegiance to
Frederick the Great? How is it that he celebrates his ancestor, Frederick?
This "scrap of paper" incident makes it all quite clear. The bitter waters
gushing out of the Potsdam Palace go back to a bitter spring named
Frederick the Great. The poisoned fruit that ripened in 1914 hangs on a
bough whose trunk was planted by Frederick in far-off days.
Among many musty old German books recently published is a little
book by that same Frederick. The Prussian king was writing certain
notes for the guidance of his sons and successors, among whom is the
present Kaiser. In his page of counsels Frederick talks very plainly
about the breaking of treaties:
"Consider a treaty as a scrap of paper under any one of the following
emergencies: First, when necessity compels it. Second, when you lack
means to continue the war. Third, when you cannot by any other means
combat your ally or enemy."
Then Frederick raises one question: "If the interests of your army or

your people or yourself are at stake or you have to keep your word on
one hand and your pledge word and treaty is on the other hand, which
path will you take? Who can be stupid enough to hesitate in answering
this question? In other words, treaties are to be kept when they promote
your interest, and shamelessly broken when you gain thereby."
The Kaiser, therefore, had from Frederick, his ancestor, this handbook
on lying. In turn, the Kaiser gave this notion of the treaty as a scrap of
paper to his Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, who engraved, as has
been said, "on eternal brass the infamy of Germany": "We are now in a
state of necessity, and necessity knows no law. We were compelled to
override the the just protest of Luxembourg and Belgian Governments.
The wrong--I speak openly--that we are committing we will endeavour
to make good as soon as our military goal has been reached. Anybody
who is threatened, as we are threatened, and who is fighting for his
highest possessions, can have only one thought, how he is to hack his
way through."
Guizot mentions "honour and fidelity to the pledged word" as one of
the distinguishing elements of what is called "a civilized State." But
this puts Germany among the barbarous savages. Three indictments and
convictions have blackened the name of Germany throughout all the
world. First, her atrocious and dishonourable methods of warfare;
second, the carrying off into slavery of non-combatants, the Belgians
and French, and third, the breach of the pledged word and the solemn
treaties with other nations.
But at last we know that Frederick the Great, the ancestor of the Kaiser,
was the author of the phrase, "the treaty is a scrap of paper." What was
once in the gristle in the ancestor is now bred in the bone of the Kaiser
and Crown Prince. That phrase, "a scrap of paper," holds the germ of a
thousand wars. It spells the ruin of civilization. Not to resent it by war,
is for the Allies to commit spiritual suicide.
5. The Plot of the Kaiser
All the pamphlets issued secretly to the members of the Pan-German
League invariably used Rome as their illustration. We are not surprised,

therefore, to find that the German leaders called attention to the fact
that it took two wars at intervals of some years to make Rome a world
empire.
In like manner, therefore, the Kaiser and his Cabinet told the German
people at home and abroad that the first war, beginning in 1914, would
establish a Middle-Europe Empire extending from Hamburg on the
North Sea to Bagdad on the Persian Gulf.
One of the pamphlets issued many years ago fixed the countries to be
conquered about 1915, and distinctly mentioned Denmark, Holland,
Belgium and North France, Poland and Rumania, Hungary and Austria,
Serbia and Bulgaria, and the wheat granaries of Russia, with Turkey
and Armenia.
The number of people to be conquered and included after the first war
was fixed at 250,000,000.
The argument states that it will take but a few years to compact this
Middle-Europe Empire and that naturally Great Britain, Spain and Italy,
to the west, with Norway and Sweden to the north, with Italy and
Switzerland to the south, and of course Greece and Egypt would, from
time to time, as crises came, fall inevitably into Germany's hand. Berlin,
as the world capital, should by 1920 be the magnet, and the little
particles of iron, named the Balkan States, would be drawn and held by
this great German magnet in Berlin.
The first step to be taken and the first goal to be reached concerned, of
course, the English Channel, the Dutch cities on the mouth