The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 2/Charles lied

Charles lied. He wrote to his brother-in-law, Sixtus de Bourbon, asking him to tell President Poincaré that for the sake of making peace he was willing to support in the strongest manner possible the just claims of France to Alsace and Lorraine. Later he wrote William the Damned that he had never done any such thing, but had always been heart and hand with Germany in holding fast those provinces.

Why not? The Prussian princes, the Crown-Prince himself foremost, have been looting the plate and jewels and other treasures of French dwelling houses which their troops have sacked. If Hohenzollern princes of the blood royal may be thieves, may not a Hapsburg Emperor be a liar? The German emperor has again and again shown himself a liar. Has not an Austrian equal privileges? Surely a Hapsburg is not to be outdone by a parvenu Hohenzollern. Then there was Bismarck who falsified dispatches in order to provoke war and boasted of the deed; and who connived at an attempted assassination of the Russian Czar in Paris in order to make bad blood bet ween Russia and France and boasted of that. Why, in the name of the infernal Father of Liars, should Charles not lie; and why should we expect anything but treachery from the Huns and their allies? When Prussians sing “Heil dir im Siegeskranz”, surely Austrians must be permitted to respond with their national anthem “Gott erhalte Karl den Lugner.”

The North American Review’s War Weekly.