Page:The guilt of William Hohenzollern.djvu/262

258 through the impression he has made by a superior intelligence. It is only in the hereditary Monarchy, which makes the personality of the Supreme Head of the State dependent, not upon the services he renders to the State, but upon the chance accident of birth, that occasionally not only rascals but also dullards or lunatics govern the State.

The Government that brought the war upon us did not, however, act entirely without judgment. However incompetent and ignorant the Imperial Government proved to be in its foreign policy, it showed itself, in the decisive days, master of the art of winning the increasing confidence of the people at home, in the same measure as it lost that of the other nations.

We have seen how determinedly the German Social Democracy stood out against the frivolous challenge of the world-war that lay in the Austrian Ultimatum to Serbia, and how William looked askance at the “Sozis” demonstrations for peace, and promised violent measures against them.

Had the German Social Democracy known that the Austrian Ultimatum had not taken the German Government by surprise, that the latter undoubtedly knew its actual trend, although, perhaps, not its wording, even before its delivery in Belgrade, and that Germany was not the peaceable third party endeavouring to intervene between the ally and her opponents, but the fellow- conspirator of Austria, then our Party—as might have been expected with certainty in view of its attitude at that time—would have turned as sharply against the German Government as it did against the Austrian. Then William would have had either to forgo war or to begin it by locking up every leader of the Social Democracy, i.e., by declaring war simultaneously on