G K Chesterton

The Crimes of England G K Chesterton

A question is current in our looser English journalism touching what should be done with theGerman Emperor after a victory of the Allies. Our more feminine advisers incline to the view thathe should be shot. This is to make a mistake about the very nature of hereditary monarchy. Assuredly the Emperor William at his worst would be entitled to say to his amiable Crown Princewhat Charles II. said when his brother warned him of the plots of assassins: "They will never kill meto make you king." Others, of greater monstrosity of mind, have suggested that he should be sent toSt. Helena. So far as an estimate of his historical importance goes, he might as well be sent to MountCalvary. What we have to deal with is an elderly, nervous, not unintelligent person who happens tobe a Hohenzollern; and who, to do him justice, does think more of the Hohenzollerns as a sacredcaste than of his own particular place in it. In such families the old boast and motto of hereditarykingship has a horrible and degenerate truth. The king never dies; he only decays for ever. If it were a matter of the smallest importance what happened to the Emperor William when oncehis house had been disarmed, I should satisfy my fancy with another picture of his declining years; aconclusion that would be peaceful, humane, harmonious, and forgiving. In various parts of the lanes and villages of South England the pedestrian will come upon an oldand quiet public-house, decorated with a dark and faded portrait in a cocked hat and the singularinscription, "The King of Prussia." These inn signs probably commemorate the visit of the Alliesafter 1815, though a great part of the English middle classes may well have connected them with thetime when Frederick II. was earning his title of the Great, along with a number of other territorialtitles to which he had considerably less claim. Sincere and simple-hearted Dissenting ministerswould dismount before that sign (for in those days Dissenters drank beer like Christians, and indeedmanufactured most of it) and would pledge the old valour and the old victory of him whom theycalled the Protestant Hero. We should be using every word with literal exactitude if we said that hewas really something devilish like a hero. Whether he was a Protestant hero or not can be decidedbest by those who have read the correspondence of a writer calling himself Voltaire, who was quiteshocked at Frederick's utter lack of religion of any kind. But the little Dissenter drank his beer in allinnocence and rode on. And the great blasphemer of Potsdam would have laughed had he known; itwas a jest after his own heart. Such was the jest he made when he called upon the emperors to cometo communion, and partake of the eucharistic body of Poland. Had he been such a Bible reader asthe Dissenter doubtless thought him, he might haply have foreseen the vengeance of humanity uponhis house. He might have known what Poland was and was yet to be; he might have known that heate and drank to his damnation, discerning not the body of God.