The Kaiser should have faced justice
SIR – In his review of The Trial of the Kaiser (Books, January 25), Allan Massie concludes that “Germany undoubtedly bore a prime responsibility for war … But the truth was that all the other powers had a reason for wanting war in 1914. No country bore the sole guilt for war.”
He quotes Cardinal Gasparri, the Vatican secretary of state, who objected to any tribunal to determine the Kaiser’s guilt unless the allied powers “open the archives of their chancelleries” – which, of course, they would not have been prepared to do. (And nor, certainly, would the Vatican.) Yet one wonders what defence the Kaiser’s counsel could really have mounted against the charge that, on his direct orders, Germany declared war on Russia, then on France, and then invaded neutral Belgium.
