The Blot on the Kaisers Scutcheon | Page 6

of the Rhine,
and the iron mines of Northern France. We know to an absolute
certainty all the details of this plan.
For more than thirty years Germany had been organizing her army; she
knew every road, inn, bridge, factory, shop, and wholesale store in
Denmark and Holland, Belgium and France. In all of the larger ones
she had German agents belonging to the Pan-German League toiling as
workmen and every detail was planned out in advance.

In 1910 General von Bissing, one of the Kaiser's closest friends, was
sent to Brussels. For years he spent the summer months apparently at
the watering places near The Hague in Holland and Ostend in Belgium,
preparatory to the hour when Germany would seize Belgium and he
assume his position as Governor-General, living in Brussels.
Men nearing death tell the truth. In January of 1917 von Bissing
prepared a memorandum for the direction of Belgian affairs in His
Majesty's name and according to his wish. This document contains the
meditations of a dying man. The statements he makes, he says, contain
the views that inspired his every act in Belgium during his
administration.
In his last will and testament von Bissing, in the spring of 1917, advises
the German Government in Berlin that the time has come to throw off
all disguises. He says that at the beginning of the war it was probably
good policy to deny that the Government ever intended to annex
Belgium, but, he says, "now that we are victorious there is no reason
why we should not publish to the world the fact that we never intend to
give up one foot of the Belgian sea-coast, nor one ton of the Belgian
coal, nor one acre of the French iron mines."
He says plainly: "The annual Belgian production of 23,000,000 tons of
coal has given us a monopoly on the continent which has helped to
maintain our vitality. If we do not hold Belgium, administer Belgium in
future for our interest and protect Belgium by force of arms, our trade
and industry will lose the positions they have won in Belgium and
perhaps will never recover them."
And what about Dutch cities and seaports? On page eighteen of
General von Bissing's last will and testament he adds:
"Our frontier, in the interest of our sea power, must be pushed forward
to the sea." This sentence makes it perfectly plain that a little later
Germany intends to incorporate Rotterdam in her own customs union.
"Belgium must be seized and held, as it now is, and as it is to-day it
must be in the future. The conquest of Belgium has simply been forced
upon us by the necessities of German expansion."

Von Bissing, however, recognizes the difficulty of annexing Belgium
and securing the consent of the members who shall arrange the treaty of
peace at the conclusion of the war, and this is his decision:
"Our best method, therefore, is to avoid, during the peace negotiations,
all discussion about the form of the annexation and to apply nothing but
the right of conquest. Plainly Belgium's King can never consent to
abandon his sovereignty, but we can read in Machiavelli that he who
desires to take possession of a country will be compelled to remove the
King or regent, even by killing him."
Von Bissing has torn off all masks. He himself states that he is
speaking for the Kaiser, as his most trusted friend and counsellor.
Germany intends, therefore, ultimately to kill King Albert of Belgium,
and this carries with it that the Kaiser and his War Staff believe they
have the right to kill any King or President who happens to stand in the
pathway of their ambition. Every lover of mankind whose heart is
knitted in with the poor and the weak will understand what that editor
meant the other day when he said:
"The one duty of the hour, therefore, for America, is to kill Germans,
that we may keep the rest of the world from being killed."

THE JUDAS AMONG NATIONS
II
1. The Original Plot of the Members of the Potsdam Gang
Many historic meetings, big with social disaster, are recorded in history.
Witness the meeting of the Athenian judges for the killing of Socrates.
Witness the coming together of the priests and Judas for the piteous
tragedy of the death of Jesus. Witness that midnight meeting of the
conspirators in Florence for the burning of Savonarola. Terrible also the
results of that meeting in the Potsdam Palace in 1896 that culminated in
the Pan-German Empire scheme.

What began as a spark that day has ended in a world conflagration.
In retrospect the Kaiser and his associates had many events behind
them to encourage the ambition to make Berlin a world capital, Kaiser
Wilhelm the world