VI

THE KAISER DEFENDS GERMAN WAR METHODS

THE

HE Kaiser was always very careful about everything which might affect his health, and even after the war started, when his attention was naturally occupied by many pressing problems, he did not neglect his teeth, but came to me as regularly as ever.

Of this I was very glad, because it gave me an opportunity to draw the Kaiser out on many of the interesting questions which the war suggested and which I found him always ready to discuss. Perhaps the fact that I was an American led the Kaiser to greater lengths in his justification of German war methods and measures than he might otherwise have thought necessary.

The first time I saw the Kaiser after the war started was about August 10, 1914. Between eleven and twelve o'clock the night before, I had been notified by telephone that the Kaiser would like me to attend him at the Berlin palace the following morning at nine o'clock. It was the first time in my relations with the Kaiser that I had

been asked to treat him outside of my office, but from that time on I attended him at a number of different places-wherever the demands of the war happened to take him. On this particular occasion he was about to leave for the front and wanted his teeth examined before he went.

Explicit instructions were given me as to the particular door and court of the palace I should enter, and evidently the sentries had been notified of my coming, for I was rapidly conducted into a room on the ground floor.

I had been in the room but a few moments when the door opened and, without any previous announcement, the Kaiser entered, unattended. He was wearing the new field-gray German uniform in which I then saw him for the first time in my life. He wore no sword.

"Good morning, Davis!" he said. "These are very serious times, aren't they?" He seemed more sober than I had ever before seen him.

"Are the rooms here suitable for you?" he asked. "If there is anything you wish you have only to ring the bell."

The room was rather dark, but I told him that it would answer the purpose very nicely.

The work I had to do for him was nothing of a serious character and did not occupy more than twenty minutes. One of his valets stood by to give me any assistance I might need, but left the room when I was through.

"Have you been reading in the papers, Davis,"

the Kaiser asked, when we were alone, "how our soldiers have been treated by the Belgians?"

I said I had not had a chance to read the papers that morning.

"Well, you must certainly read them. They've been gouging out the eyes of our wounded and mutilating my men horribly! They call it modern, civilized warfare. That's savagery! I hope your President is taking notice of these atrocities."

Of course I was then in no position to contradict the Kaiser's assertions, as I was not in possession of any of the facts; but I learned afterward that four American newspaper correspondents had scoured Germany from one end of the country to the other in an effort to run down these reports. They left no rumor uninvestigated, no matter how far they had to travel to verify it. When they had finally exhausted every clue and followed every lead they had not found a single case to justify the charge the Kaiser had made against the Belgians -a charge which, nevertheless, the inspired German press continued to report from day to day.

The object of these lies was to justify the outrages which the Germans were committing in their plan to terrorize the inhabitants of the countries they were overrunning. According to reports, the activities of francs-tireurs in the occupied territories were met by the Germans with the most barbaric punishments. Crucifixions and similar atrocities were very common. Undoubtedly the Kaiser was aware of what his soldiers were doing, and to defend

their conduct he lent a ready ear to the unfounded charges made against the Belgians.

"I have already framed a message which I intend sending to your President regarding the use of dum-dum bullets by the Belgians and French,' the Kaiser went on. "We have ample proof to establish this charge not only in the character of the wounds suffered by my soldiers, but in the shape of unused cartridges which we found in the captured forts."

Strangely enough, the Kaiser sent off his protest to President Wilson about the same day that President Poincaré forwarded a similar protest based upon the use of dum-dum bullets by the Germans.

Regarding the violation of Belgium's neutrality, the Kaiser was able to offer no reasonable argument. The fact that he was willing to pay Belgium for permission to allow his armies to go through that country was in his eyes apparently sufficient justification for taking by force what Belgium refused to sell.

"How foolish of Belgium to have resisted us!" he declared in this connection. "Had they consented to let us walk through, we would have paid for everything everything! Not a hair of their heads would have been touched and Belgium to-day would be in the same happy financial condition that Luxembourg is."

At a subsequent interview we referred to Belgium again, and the Kaiser alleged that Japan had

violated the neutrality of China when she sent troops through Chinese territory to seize Kiau-chau.

"It is all right for the Allies," he sneered, “to do these things, but when Germany does them England rises up in righteous indignation. The hypocrites! Why, we found papers in Brussels which showed conclusively that England and Belgium had a secret agreement by which in the event of war with Germany England was to be permitted to occupy Belgium! We've got those papers in Berlin. We could ask no more positive proof against them!"

Just what papers the Kaiser referred to I don't know, but if, indeed, any such agreement were actually made and the Germans did, in fact, succeed in obtaining them, as the Kaiser alleged, certain it is that the Germans did not know of their existence when they entered Belgium in violation of that nation's neutrality; and as far as Japan's conduct with respect to China is concerned, the Kaiser well knew that the passage through Chinese territory was not made in the face of a solemn treaty to respect the neutrality of that nation.

Some of the arguments the Kaiser raised in his discussions with me regarding the war were so weak and untenable that one might well doubt his sincerity in urging them, but I shall give them for what they are worth.

We were talking of the war in general, and the subject of German atrocities came up.

"They refer to us as the Huns!" the Kaiser ob