The Crimes of England | Page 5

a catalogue of
the real crimes of England; and I have selected them on a principle
which cannot fail to interest and please you. On many occasions we
have been very wrong indeed. We were very wrong indeed when we
took part in preventing Europe from putting a term to the impious
piracies of Frederick the Great. We were very wrong indeed when we
allowed the triumph over Napoleon to be soiled with the mire and
blood of Blucher's sullen savages. We were very wrong indeed when
we allowed the peaceful King of Denmark to be robbed in broad
daylight by a brigand named Bismarck; and when we allowed the
Prussian swashbucklers to enslave and silence the French provinces
which they could neither govern nor persuade. We were very wrong
indeed when we flung to such hungry adventurers a position so
important as Heligoland. We were very wrong indeed when we praised
the soulless Prussian education and copied the soulless Prussian laws.
Knowing that you will mingle your tears with mine over this record of
English wrong-doing, I dedicate it to you, and I remain,
Yours reverently,
G. K. CHESTERTON

II--The Protestant Hero
A question is current in our looser English journalism touching what

should be done with the German Emperor after a victory of the Allies.
Our more feminine advisers incline to the view that he should be shot.
This is to make a mistake about the very nature of hereditary monarchy.
Assuredly the Emperor William at his worst would be entitled to say to
his amiable Crown Prince what Charles II. said when his brother
warned him of the plots of assassins: "They will never kill me to make
you king." Others, of greater monstrosity of mind, have suggested that
he should be sent to St. Helena. So far as an estimate of his historical
importance goes, he might as well be sent to Mount Calvary. What we
have to deal with is an elderly, nervous, not unintelligent person who
happens to be a Hohenzollern; and who, to do him justice, does think
more of the Hohenzollerns as a sacred caste than of his own particular
place in it. In such families the old boast and motto of hereditary
kingship has a horrible and degenerate truth. The king never dies; he
only decays for ever.
If it were a matter of the smallest importance what happened to the
Emperor William when once his house had been disarmed, I should
satisfy my fancy with another picture of his declining years; a
conclusion that would be peaceful, humane, harmonious, and forgiving.
In various parts of the lanes and villages of South England the
pedestrian will come upon an old and quiet public-house, decorated
with a dark and faded portrait in a cocked hat and the singular
inscription, "The King of Prussia." These inn signs probably
commemorate the visit of the Allies after 1815, though a great part of
the English middle classes may well have connected them with the time
when Frederick II. was earning his title of the Great, along with a
number of other territorial titles to which he had considerably less
claim. Sincere and simple-hearted Dissenting ministers would dismount
before that sign (for in those days Dissenters drank beer like Christians,
and indeed manufactured most of it) and would pledge the old valour
and the old victory of him whom they called the Protestant Hero. We
should be using every word with literal exactitude if we said that he
was really something devilish like a hero. Whether he was a Protestant
hero or not can be decided best by those who have read the
correspondence of a writer calling himself Voltaire, who was quite

shocked at Frederick's utter lack of religion of any kind. But the little
Dissenter drank his beer in all innocence and rode on. And the great
blasphemer of Potsdam would have laughed had he known; it was a jest
after his own heart. Such was the jest he made when he called upon the
emperors to come to communion, and partake of the eucharistic body
of Poland. Had he been such a Bible reader as the Dissenter doubtless
thought him, he might haply have foreseen the vengeance of humanity
upon his house. He might have known what Poland was and was yet to
be; he might have known that he ate and drank to his damnation,
discerning not the body of God.
Whether the placing of the present German Emperor in charge of one
of these wayside public-houses would be a jest after his own heart
possibly remains to be seen. But it would be much more melodious and
fitting an end than any of the sublime euthanasias which his enemies
provide for him. That old sign creaking above him as he sat on