e whilst the French people whom he had
crammed with glory for a quarter of a century were seeking to tear him
limb from limb. His success had made him the enemy of every country
except France: his failure made him the enemy of the human race. And
that was why Europe rose up finally and smashed him, although the
English Government which profited by that operation oppressed the
English people for thirty years afterwards more sordidly than Napoleon
would have oppressed them, and its Allies replaced him on the throne of
France by an effete tyrant not worthy to unlace his shoe latchet.
Nothing can finally redeem Militarism. When even genius itself takes
that path its end is still destruction. When mere uppishness takes it
the end is not changed, though it may be reached more precipitately and
disastrously.

*The Kaiser.*

Prussia has talked of that path for many years as the one down which its
destiny leads it. Its ruler, with the kid gloves he called mailed fists
and the high class tailoring he called shining armour, did much of the
talking, though he is in practice a most peaceful teetotaller, as many
men with their imaginations full of the romance of war are. He had a
hereditary craze for playing at soldiers; and he was and is a naive
suburban snob, as the son of The Englishwoman would naturally be,
talking about "the Hohenzollerns" exactly as my father's people in
Dublin used to talk about "the Shaws." His stage walk, familiar through
the cinematograph, is the delight of romantic boys, and betrays his own
boyish love of the _Paradeschritt_. It is frightful to think of the
powers which Europe, in its own snobbery, left in the hands of this
Peter Pan; and appalling as the results of that criminal levity have
been, yet, being by no means free from his romantic follies myself, I do
not feel harshly toward Peter, who, after all, kept the peace for over
twenty-six years. In the end his talk and his games of soldiers in
preparation for a toy conquest of the world frightened his neighbours
into a league against him; and that league has now caught him in just
such a trap as his strategists were laying for his neighbours. We please
ourselves by pretending that he did not try to extricate himself, and
forced the war on us; but that is not true. When he realized his peril
he tried hard enough; but when he saw that it was no use he accepted the
situation and dashed at his enemies with an infatuate courage not
unworthy of the Hohe