My Year of the War - Including an Account of Experiences with the Troops in France and - the Record of a Visit to the Grand Fleet Which is Here Given for the - First Time in its Complete Form by Frederick Palmer
page 89 of 428 (20%)
page 89 of 428 (20%)
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idea--with the great men of the time on their right and left hands.
People whose sense of taste, not to say of humour, may limit their statecraft had smiled at this monotonous and grandiose row of the dead bones of distinguished and mediocre royalty immortalized in marble to the exact number of thirty-two. But they were My Ancestors, O Germans, who made you what you are! Right dress and keep that line of royalty in mind! It is your royal line, older than the trees in the garden, firm as the rocks, Germany itself. The last is not the least in might nor the least advertised in the age of publicity. He is to make the next step in advance for Germany and bring more tribute home, if all Germans will be loyal to him. One paused to look at the photograph of the Kaiser in a shop window; a big photograph of that man whose photograph is everywhere in Germany. It is a stern face, this face, as the leader wishes his people to see him, with its erectile moustache, the lips firm set, the eyes challenging and the chin held so as to make it symbolic of strength: a face that strives to say in that pose: "Onward! I lead!" Germans have seen it every day for a quarter of a century. They have lived with it and the character of it has grown into their natures. In the same window was a smaller photograph of the Crown Prince, with his cap rakishly on the side of his head, as if to give himself a distinctive characteristic in the German eye; but his is the face of a man who is not mature for his years, and a trifle dissipated. For a while after the war began he, as leader of the war party, knew the joy of being more popular than the Kaiser. But the tide turned soon in favour of a father who appeared to be drawn reluctantly into the ordeal of death and wounds for his people in "defence of the Fatherland" and against a son who had clamoured for the horror |
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