GERMANY: Imperial Vaporings

Wilhelm II, onetime German Emperor, received in his chateau at Doom, Holland, a correspondent of the Dagens Nyheder, Copenhagen newspaper. The onetime Kaiser, now a grey-bearded old man, has seemingly lost none of his arrogance, none of his pomposity, none of his commanding dogmatism; for, complaining, he said to the Danish newspaperman: “I could show the road to peace, but the world prefers regarding me as a scapegoat to consulting me as an adviser.”

Bent, his withered left arm hanging loosely by his side, the fallen All Highest went on: “While ministers with olive branches in their hands are discussing peace, I see jealousy among the nations steadily increasing. New experiments are made with U-boats, torpedoes, ex- plosives and horrid gases, and secret discussions are carried on on the employment of poisonous gas on the oceans. Besides transocean flights, secret duration flights are made by planes heavily loaded with bombshells, so that one must consider the possibility of being at- tacked suddenly.”

Then, assuming his psychic powers—an alleged natural gift in which he takes great pride—he predicted dire war: “I am even certain that many of those powers talking about disarmament do so in order to inspire greater confidence, thus disguising their purposes. According to my opinion, we shall go through another and more awful war at the latest in 1937, a war which will last only a few days and possibly only a few hours.

“In the same moment that war is proclaimed giant fleets of airplanes, airships and U-boats will be informed by wireless. Merchantmen will be destroyed immediately and a nation unprepared for war will be exterminated within 48 hours. On land and sea new and pernicious gases and explosives, unknown in Germany, will be employed and annihilate the weaker nations within a moment.”

Concluding he complained of being surrounded by spies, whose busi- ness, he contended, was to prevent him from “endangering the world.”