“I wonder how long my dear friend and ally will be able to stand this?”
So “Wilhelm” is made to remark, as he peers over from behind his parapet, safely guarded with barbed wire, and sees the aged Francis Joseph receiving blow after blow, on the one side from the Italians, on the other from the Rumanians. The caricature, it must be admitted, is not quite up-to-date in one respect, for Wilhelm has certainly done his best, and so far only too successfully, to tear off the smaller of these foes. But it is more than up-to-date in another, for the ancient “Dual Monarch” has already succumbed to his years and his enemies. And for reasons best known to himself, “Wilhelm” has run away from his funeral, and thinks he will consult his delicate health and his no less delicate dignity, by sending the Crown Prince instead, that young man being no longer wanted imperatively or imperially on the French front. How young Wilhelm will get on with young Carl remains to be seen. The experience may have dangers of its own. Mr. Raemaekers might look out for a further opportunity in this new situation.
The Roman Emperor Tiberius, that gloomy tyrant, is said to have remarked that governing the Roman people was like holding a wolf by the ears. Here the position is reversed. The patient, obedient, and faithful German people, for such, however infatuated, we must allow it has been, is represented as by no means like a wolf, but more like the traditional opposite, a sheep. But even the sheep may turn if driven beyond measure. Meanwhile, this caricature may help to bring home to it the true position.
The Kaiser, stout, with all his heavy, comfortable clothes, his military cloak, his helmet, and boots and spurs, one of which he digs into his beast of burden, rides comfortably on the back of “German Michael,” the common soldier, and cheerfully bids him “hold out” and struggle up the toilsome hill of victory, with its shifting, clogging soil.
The desperate agony and pain of the poor victim, the drops of sweat falling from his brow, his eyes starting from his head, are well depicted, and also the complacency of the emperor, blended with senile vanity and self-glorification. His aspiration not long ago was to be the “Young Man of the Sea.” Here he is depicted as the “Old Man” of that element.