The present Kaiser has
no imagination. A man of any prevision of the future might have foreseen
that any attack upon England would settle the Irish question; that any
treaty with Turkey would force Italy, as Turkey's enemy in the late
Italian-Turkish war, to break with Germany; any man with the least
instinct for diplomacy might have known that the twentieth century man
is so incensed by an enemy's trespass upon his property, that Belgium
would have resisted encroachment, and so cost Germany the best three
weeks of the entire war. If the history of great wars tells us anything,
it tells us that the first qualification of the statesman and diplomat
is an intuitive knowledge of a future that is the certain outcome of the
present. There has been no foresight on the part of the makers and
advisers of this war. Years ago, when the Austrian Emperor visited
Innsbruck, the Burgomaster ordered foresters to go up on the mountain
sides and cut certain swaths of brush. At the moment the man with his
axe did not know what he was doing, but when the night fell, and the
torch was lifted on the boughs, the people in the city below read these
words written in letters of fire, "Welcome to our Emperor.
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