The Drama of Three Hundred and Sixty Five Days/Some Salutary Lessons
SOME SALUTARY LESSONS
Only it was not Prussia we were living in, and
it was not the year 1720, so the air tingled
occasionally with other tales of little salutary
lessons administered to our Royal upstart on
his style of pursuing the pleasures considered
suitable to a Prince. One day it was told of
him that, having given a cup to be raced for on
the Bob-run, he was wroth to find on the noticeboard
of entries the names of a team of highly
respectable little Englishmen who are familiar on
the racecourse; and, taking out his pencil-case,
he scored them off, saying, "My cup is for
gentlemen, not jockeys," whereupon a young
English soldier standing by had said: "We're
not jockeys here, sir, and we're not princes; we
are only sportsmen."
I cannot vouch for that story, but I can certainly say that, after a particularly flagrant and deliberate act of rudeness, imperilling the safety of several persons in the village street, the Crown Prince of Germany was told to his foolish face by an Englishman, who need not be named, that he was a fool, and a damned fool, and deserved to be kicked off the road.
And this is the mindless, but mischievous, person, the ridiculous buccaneer, born out of his century, who was permitted to interfere in the destinies of Europe; to help to determine the fate of tens of millions of men on the battlefields, and the welfare of hundreds of millions of women and children in their homes. What wild revel the invisible powers of evil must have held in Berlin on that night of August 1, 1914, after the Kaiser had thrown down his pen!