The Emperor of Germany possesses a special talent for adding new complications to a difficult situation, so as to render it impossible of solution.  He has now so completely tangled up the parliamentary skein, that in a little while it will be impossible for Parliament to govern.  Can one conceive of a majority of the Chamber rallying around the Catholic centre, or the socialists, for the same reason, increasing in number at the bye-elections?  In such a case William II, equally unable to surrender in favour of the clericals or to submit to the socialists, will find himself, as others have been before him, driven to adopt the ultimate remedy of war.

February 12, 1892. [19]

If the States of Germany, in joining themselves on to Prussia, have thereby increased in power, they have gained very little in humanity.  The circular, secretly issued by Prince George of Saxony, commanding the 12th Army Corps, reveals something of the brutalities and exquisite torture which German soldiers have to suffer.  This circular was addressed to the commanders of regiments, and has been published by a socialist newspaper, the Vorwaerts.  This Prince of Saxony is indignant at these things, doubtless because he is a Saxon; Bavaria, we are told, declines to accept the application of the Prussian Military Code.  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.  He will, therefore, dominate the papacy, and through it will govern the world.

February 26, 1892. [20]