"'It is a coup d'état, an abuse of power to which your Majesty must not submit. Your Majesty is King of Prussia, and there is now more than ever a pressing necessity for Your Majesty to remain with the army as supreme commander. I guarantee that it will be true to Your Majesty.'
"His Majesty replied that he was and would remain King of Prussia, and that he would not abandon the army. Thereupon he commissioned Generals von Pless and Marschall and Excellency von Hintze to report to the Field Marshal what had happened. He then took leave of the Crown Prince and of me. After I had left, he called me back, thanked me once more and said:
"'I remain King of Prussia and I remain with the troops.'
"'Come to the front troops in my section. Your Majesty will be in absolute safety there. Promise me to remain with the army in all events.'
"His Majesty took leave of me with the words:
"I took leave of him and have not seen him again."
In the general condemnation of the Kaiser, his flight to Holland has been construed as due to cowardice. His motives are unimportant, but this construction appears to be unjust. He was convinced that he had nothing to fear from his people, nor is there any reason to suppose that he would for a moment have been in danger if he had remained. It is also probable that he entertained hopes of leading a successful counter-revolutionary movement. But his protests were overruled by men in whom he had great confidence. Hindenburg and Groener, following an unfavorable report from nearly all the army chiefs regarding the feeling in their commands, told the Kaiser that they could not guarantee his safety for a single night. They declared even that the picked storm-battalion guarding his headquarters at Spa was not to be depended on.
Others added their entreaties, and finally, unwillingly and protestingly, the Kaiser consented to go.
With him went the Crown Prince. There was no one left in Germany to whom adherents of a counter-revolution could rally. Scheming politicians for months afterward painted on every wall the spectre of counter-revolution, and it proved a powerful weapon of agitation against the more conservative and democratic men in charge of the country's affairs, but counter-revolution from above--and that was what these leaders falsely or ignorantly pretended to fear--was never possible from the time the armistice was signed until the peace was made at Versailles. Counter-revolution ever threatened the stability of the government, but it was the gory counter-revolution of Bolshevism.