Strengthened by public sympathy, I have been able to resist oppression. Justice is slow but sure. The principal Austrian mental specialists refused to certify me as insane, and an asylum in Germany was found where I was destined to serve a life sentence. I then said to William II: "As an accomplice of this crime, you will be eventually punished." I reflected at this time that the man who was a party to the crime of thrusting a sane being into the abyss of madness was capable of other abominations. I did not believe that God would permit him to go unpunished. He has been punished. The same blow has struck the companion of his life, the wife who was so intolerant of the faults of others, so uncompromising from the height of her unchristian-like virtue. As the enemy of her neighbour, her influence would have been enough to bring about the war, since the worst of warlike tendencies is the spirit of intolerance. It is not sufficiently well known, but it is a fact, that the awful conflict of 1914-1918 was simply the result of the pitiless and inhuman hate of Lutheran Prussia, which was devoured by the wish to dominate, to govern and to oppress. Disbelief caused the war. Belief only will bring about lasting peace. Belgium and France must understand that, although Prussia held and enriched Germany, Germany never liked Prussia. Germany can only be won by confidence and by affection. The Catholic section, who are no less generous than the Socialists, who although the greater part are sincere, are indifferent to Divine will, should show an example of reconciliation. The bishops would then have a great rôle to perform. Religious conferences and pilgrimages might afford occasions of meeting on a better footing, and before I die I should like to see Germans, Belgians and French united in the presence of the God of Love, in the same faith and in the same hope, and through the Love of His Law they would then exchange the kiss of peace. CHAPTER XIII The Courts of Munich and Old Germany Each time I have stayed at the Court of Vienna I have regretted that I did not know Louis II personally. When I first saw him he had already taken refuge in his dreams and his dreamlike castles. Like Rudolph, he had been seized with a great mistrust, not of humanity, but of those who directed human affairs. He did not, like Rudolph, find a way of escape in suicide. Louis II created for himself a paradise of art and beauty, where he endeavoured to lose himself, away from his people, whom he loved, and by whom he was loved in return. I once caught sight of him in the park at Munich sitting alone in his state carriage, escorted by rather theatrical outriders. Behind the bevelled plate-glass windows framed in gold, he sat imposing and motionless. He was an astonishing apparition, one which the crowd saluted without his seeming to take any notice. After his extravagances the Court, forced to economize, easily adopted a more or less bourgeois existence.