The progressive party had asked for both; the
satisfaction they have received appeases them for the moment, but the
socialists will still be able to say that William's Government takes off
the duties on foodstuffs that poison the people, and leaves them on those
which would afford them healthy nourishment.
September 27, 1891. [14]
William II has decidedly no luck when he puts the martial trumpet to his
lips. It was at Erfurt that he learned that the tribes of the Wa Hehe
had massacred Zalewski's expedition into East Africa. It is said that,
on hearing this news, the German Emperor, seized with one of those sudden
outbursts of rage which throw him into convulsions, swore to avenge in
torrents of blood the insult thus suffered by the ever-victorious banner
of Prussia. Are we, then, to see the Reichstag in its turn, like the
French and Italian Parliaments, wasting its millions and its men in
colonial adventures?
At Muenich, William II has declared that the wretched condition of the
artillery in the Austrian army, the lack of cohesion in its infantry, and
the inexperience, not to say incapacity, of its officers, render it unfit
for war in the near future, and that no hope of its improvement is to be
entertained, so long as it shall have as its head a man so completely
worn out as Francis Joseph. Germany's armament is to be completely
changed and renewed, and it is even said that William will go down in
person to the Reichstag during the autumn session to demand the enormous
credits which the situation requires.
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