By
common consent, the House of Peers and the Chamber of Deputies at Muenich
have voted against subscribing to a condition of things which permits men
to behave like real savages. Military Germany takes pleasure in cruelty,
sentimental Germany is moved by the tortures inflicted on her children.
Brutality and sentiment rub elbows, and are so strangely intermingled
amongst our neighbours that I, for one, abandon all attempts at
understanding them.
It was Von Moltke who said one day that the army was the school of all
the virtues. Next day the same Field-Marshal put into circulation
certain formulas for the infliction of cruelty, intended for the use of
commanding officers.
"If a superior officer should order an inferior to commit a crime, the
inferior must commit it." Thus says William II, who in the very next
breath expresses his sentimental concern over the unfortunate lot of a
woman of loose life handed over to the tender mercies of a bully!
William's latest quarrel, it seems, is with liberty of conscience. The
_summus episcopus_ of the evangelical religion becomes the protector of
clericalism in Germany. He, the elect of God, has discovered the power
of the Catholic Church. This was the power that broke Bismarck, but it
will not break William II, for he intends to assimilate it. He dreams of
establishing his Protectorate over Catholicism in Europe, America, Africa
and in the East; his destiny lies in a world-wide mission, which only
Catholicism can support.
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