His Majesty’s Birthday
As usual, on January 27 I telephoned my reporting senior, Kaiser Wilhelm II, to offer my best wishes on his birthday. Unusually, he was at home, working in his office in the Neues Palais in Potsdam. After offering my felicitations and telling him how much Germany misses him, I asked, “What is Your Majesty doing that keeps you desk-bound? And are you sitting in your famous saddle chair?”
“As to the latter, yes. I recently ordered all my ministers to get saddle chairs,” he replied. “I had them equipped with an apparatus where, when they again give me bad advice, I can push a button and their chair bucks them off. If I’d done that while I was still in your world, there would have been no World War.”
“That is what President Wilson’s advisor, Col. House, wrote to the President after spending time with you in the summer of 1914. He said you neither wanted war nor expected war,” I replied.
“That is correct,” His Majesty said. “And that brings me back to your first question: why am I now stuck behind a desk? I’m writing a speech, quite an important one. It begins with an historical review, one that contradicts the Whig version of history in which every nations must move toward ‘progress’ and ‘democracy.’ Such ‘progress’”
has seen Europe lose all belief in itself, in its culture, in its rightness and in its goodness. The Germany over which I ruled was a normal country and a good country. Is any German taught that now in school? No, because cultural Marxism shapes everything including education and it paints the past as nothing but “oppression.” What rot!
“And what of democracy, Your Majesty?” I asked.
“If democracy worked, all people living in democracies would like their governments. After all, they elected them. But most people in such places despise their governments. Why? Because everyone in office looks only to stay in office, which means they mortgage their countries’ futures to give things to voters now. Only monarchs and old, aristocratic families, free of the ‘elections’ nonsense, can look out for their countries’ futures over the long term. Don’t misunderstand me: elected assemblies have a roll to play. In my Germany, we had an elected Reichstag. But we also had an upper house that represented the ruling houses and high nobility of the Reich’s component states, Saxony, Bavaria, Baden, etc. And I, the Kaiser, was no powerless figurehead. Over and over, in diplomatic crises, it was I, not the Reichstag, that insisted Germany back down to preserve the peace. As it happens, the speech I am now writing is for an elected assembly. The electors of the Holy Roman Empire, — I am Elector of Brandenburg — are meeting soon to elect a new emperor.”
“I thought the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in 1806,” I remarked.
“The Emperor Francis did not have the authority to dissolve the Empire,” Kaiser Wilhelm replied. “A number of legal scholars have recently argued, rightly I think, that the Holy Roman Empire still exists. Archduke Eduard’s recent book, The Habsburg Way, discusses this. It demonstrates that the Empire still lives, not just in their shadows, but on the ground, in Liechtenstein and in the German Church in Rome.” And now the rightful Electors are once again to gather, this time in Prague, to choose a new Emperor, who will, as in the past, be the head of the House of Habsburg.”
“So Hohenzollerns and Habsburgs are now working side-by-side, regardless of the Protestant-Catholic division?” I asked.
“Yes,” His Majesty replied. “That division has little importance now. What is at stake is the Christian faith itself, as Europe is overrun by Moslems on the one hand and cultural Marxism on the other. When we’re done, the only mosque in Germany will be the one heading the pumping works in Potsdam.”
“But we’re not just going to meet once, elect a new Emperor, and go home. We will establish, in Prague or Vienna, an alternative to the idiotic, ineffective, culturally Marxist abomination in Brussels. As I’m sure you know, once the World War began, despite all my efforts to prevent it, my chief war aim was a united Europe.”
But it would have been a Christian Europe, a noble Europe, a Europe proud of its history and its creation of the world’s greatest culture. It would have been led by monarchs and by the high nobility, not grubby little politicians bleating about “democracy” and then turning on it when the people elect parties they don’t like.
Central Europe, at least, will have an alternative to Brussels. Brussels can go back to making carpets.
“Your Majesty, you have given me hope,” I replied. “No longer will the people who believe as you and I do be restricted to writing and talking. We will be creating facts on the ground, a parallel structure around which Christians and true Europeans can rally. This is really wonderful news!”
“And now I must turn back to my speech,” His Majesty concluded. “Today in my saddle chair, tomorrow in the saddle riding to Prague, where the cheer will rise, ‘Gott erhalte Karl den Kaiser.’ Courage, Wilhelm!”