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Show FROM THE KAISER TO THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR. Y DEAR HERTLING : Entrust to your best agent the organization of England and America. Things are going well in those quarters but not well enough. Nothing is more important. We can afford to let them take Berlin, impose any kind of terms and sequester for a time my whole Potsdam family at St. Helena in fact it is very likely that this is just what they will do if only in doing it they let us transform them into what we wish them to become. To you I shall not conceal my rage over their conduct in this war. What Bismarck gave me was a socialism with a powerful" autocracy at the top, alert for development of industry and trade. We at the top were to know exactly what we wanted and every individual in the empire was to do just what he was told. The theory was that with a machine like this we could overhaul the democracies in commerce and batter them into submission by arms. We were overhauling them in commerce when we got ready for the battering process, and by now ('three years') we should have been in New York, having taken London Lon-don in 'three months' and Paris in 'three weeks.' I call your attention to the fact that we are not in New York or London or in Paris and it is my very secret hunch (sehr geheimnis-svolle geheimnis-svolle Vorahnung) that Ave are not going to be this time. These democracies de-mocracies have not worked as I had expected and planned. Look at England. Here was a people who for centuries had been taking one power after another away from their autocracy until shortly before we attacked their Allies they had gone the whole length by eviscerating the House of Lords. Nobody in England would do as he was told and if he would there was nobody to tell him what to do. Even now I have to chuckle when I think about the mess they had made of themselves. And America! Masters they had none in three centuries from Plymouth Rock: discipline unknown, national feeling non-existent, every man for himself and public policy a weather-vane. Plenty of Englishmen and plenty of Americans knew what I was up to and had known it for years. What difference did that make in countries where everybody's business is nobody's business? Well, I no sooner tore up that scrap of paper than Englishmen from everywhere and nowhere swarmed forward the very Englishmen English-men who had been doing as they pleased and relying on themselves without any control from above and built over night a machine that stopped ours on which we had been at work for forty years. The more wrapped up these fanatics had been in the unrestrained and un-guided un-guided pursuits of industry, commerce and transportation, the more madly they fell over one another to report in for the business of saving sav-ing France and themselves. America came in and in a few months every business and railroad man in that country had turned over his plant, his organization and himself to the project as if it were an affair of his own. It is not politicians that are conducting this war for the United States but business men. Hertling, it must never occur again. Democracies will not do. Not only do they fight, as I had hoped and believed they would not, but they develop mechanical and tactical warfare from where we left ' off and check-mate all that we do. Plow are we to crush and absorb such peoples? What would we do with them if crushed, since they utterly lack the individual sense of dependence or obedience? We shall never extend our rule over the British and American domin- ? ions either commercially or politically so long as those peoples permit their individuals to rely on themselves and compete among themselves in mining, manufactures, commerce and transportation. It is not only the companies that compete when there is no autocracy, but those whp serve the companies. Every individual in the whole fabric holds himself personally responsible for making discoveries, inventions, inven-tions, improvements in organization. Has it occurred to you that God (unser Gott) might come to like that sort of thing if we permitted it to continue? In any event the gods of trade and of war smile on it always. The whole process produces pro-duces the type of individuals who turn too easily from one thing to another. ' I said at the outset that things are going very well. By this I meant that under our attack England and America have been obliged to do through government many things which in time of peace were left to individuals. The British and United States governments have taken over the railways. Both British and American governments have taken away the private of private negotiation in matters of price, quality and delivery and through their priorities are virtually determining deter-mining for individuals in what business they can and in what they cannot can-not engage. See to it that all this is not merely temporary. Through German emigration and through our propaganda we have for many years been inoculating these countries with a serum. Use your influence influ-ence if possible so that the political parties, which are all radical now, shall be committed to the permanent retention of governmental control con-trol after the war. My object is obvious. By eliminating competition among Englishmen Eng-lishmen and among Americans we shall breed up in the absence of an autocracy a sort of mushy socialism. Let everyone be dependent for his opportunity and his advancement upon political authorities. These would be selected not by someone at the top who knows exactly what he wants and remains the same decade after decade, but by the voters. Their majority flaps in the wind. Remove the incentive for strong men to go into industry, commerce and transportation. Preclude the possibility that in the trade conflict to come and in the next war either England or America will have any such men as have stopped us this time or any non-governmental institutions for the development of such men. St. Helena has its discomforts. A German government responsible respon-sible to a free parliament would have the effect of suspending for a time the working out of my plans. But all this is temporary. We endure it for the sake of The Day (Der Tag). Enfeeble those who obstruct us. The type we seek to cultivate is Russia: chaos a triumph tri-umph of our diplomacy. This is the ideal toward which you must labor in England and America : government operation, socialism, chaos. In our hands such peoples will be as children. Our emissaries have but to propose it and they will come of their own accord to unlock St. Helena. They will look on with imbecile grin while our junker, munition and military faithful restore the Fatherland. Germany as it will be spawned at the peace Congress will be a spineless parliamentary mollusc. If you are zealous England and America will regard us through such spectacles that without alarm they will see that spineless mollusc evolve once more into a vertebrate autocracy capable of devouring all such jelly fish as I am instructing you to make of England and America through the encouragement of government ownership and operation of utilities utili-ties and business. WILHELM, I. R. As conceived by Frank W. Noxon, secretary of the Railway Business Association. This extraordinary estimate of the imperial Prussian policy appeared in a recent issue of "THE NATION'S BUSINESS." |
