IMPERIAL utterances are, or were till lately, treated with great respect in Germany. What the “all-highest” says must surely be true. But a modern oracle, if he wishes to keep his credit, should avoid prediction. He may falsify the past and misread the present with impunity; but he will be wise to leave the future alone. The Kaiser has been imprudent. He began by telling his troops to walk over the “contemptible little British army,” the finest and most experienced professional soldiers in the world; next he informed them that they would all be at home again “at the fall of the leaf,” in 1914; then he hazarded the statement that Russia was done for, and the Allies generally at the end of their resources; and lastly the carefully prepared thrust, which, he declared, was to give France the coup de grÂce, has missed its aim.

It is impolite to treat an emperor in this way; he is not used to it and does not like it. It is the business of his subjects to see that his reign is a blaze of triumph. A breakdown after so many years of rehearsals! It is really too bad; there must have been gross mismanagement somewhere.

W. R. INGE, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral.