The Blot on the Kaiser's 'ScutcheonHillis, Newell Dwight
History
The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon
Hillis, Newell Dwight
World War, 1914-1918 -- Sermons
History tells us that Christianity has always kept good company. Its
friends have been architects, artists, poets and statesmen. Christianity
repeats itself through its friends in the Gothic Cathedral shaped in the
form of the cross, in the Transfiguration of Raphael, the Duomo of
Giotto, the Paradise Lost of Milton, the In Memoriam of Tennyson, the
Emancipation Proclamation of Lincoln. Christianity has never formed any
close friendships with jails, gallows or slave ships. Men like Gladstone
and Lincoln always kept good company; their friends have been scholars
and heroes; but, in striking contrast, consider the friends selected by
the Kaiser.
To the Kaiser came a critical hour; at that moment he was at the parting
of the ways. It became necessary for him to make a choice of friends.
Like every man, his isolation was impossible and friendship became a
necessity.
The Kaiser had the whole world from which to choose. Yonder in London
were King Edward and his son, the Prince of Wales. In France were
certain statesmen and scientists like Curie. There was the old hero
living in the capital of Japan and two ex-Presidents known the world
around for their splendid manhood; and he could have made overtures of
friendship to any one of these brave men; but in the silence of the
night the Kaiser passed in review earth's great men, and finally
selected for his close friend the lowest of the low--the butcher,
unspeakable butcher--the Sultan of Turkey.
At that time the Sultan had just completed the butchery of many
Armenians. His garments were red with blood, his hands dripped with
gore. His house was a harem; his hand held a dagger. The sea-wall behind
his palace rose out of the blue waters of the Bosporus.
When an American battle-ship was anchored there and a diver went down he
pulled a rope and was brought up, shivering with terror, and saying that
he found himself surrounded with corpses tied in sacks and held down by
stones at the bottom of the sea.
In that hour the Kaiser exclaimed: "Let the Sultan be my associate! I
will go to Constantinople and sign a treaty with the unspeakable
butcher."
And so the Kaiser took his train, lived in the Sultan's palace, signed
this treaty, and hired the Sultan's knife and club, just as the Chief
Priest Annas chose Judas to be his representative upon whom he could
load the responsibility for the murder of Jesus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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