The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Schemes of the Kaiser, by Juliette Adam,
Translated by J. O. P. Bland

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Schemes of the Kaiser

Author: Juliette Adam

Release Date: February 9, 2006 [eBook #17737]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SCHEMES OF THE KAISER***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

THE SCHEMES OF THE KAISER

From the French of Juliette Adam

by J. O. P. Bland

New York
E. P. Dutton & Company
1918
Printed in Great Britain

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

More fortunate than the majority of the prophets who cannot speak
smooth things, Madame Adam has lived to find honour in her own country:
_La grande Francaise_ has come into her own. God willing, she should
live to see that _revanche_ for which, through good and evil report,
she has laboured unceasingly these forty-five years, to see the
arrogant Prussian humbled to the dust and Alsace-Lorraine restored to
France. 1917, she firmly believes will revenge and reverse the tragedy
of 1871. More fortunate than the great British soldier who spent his
veteran days in warning his countrymen of the ordeal to come, Madame
Adam, now in her eighty-first year, may yet hope to see the banners of
the Allies crowned with victory, the black wreaths on the statue of
Strasburg in the Place de la Concorde changed to garlands of rejoicing.

There have been dark days in these forty-five years, times when, even
to herself, the struggle for _la patrie_ seemed almost a forlorn hope.
It was so at the time of the Berlin Congress in 1878, when, after his
visit to Germany, Gambetta abandoned the idea of _la revanche_. It was
so in 1891, when she realised that the influence of Paul Deroulede's
Ligue des Patriotes had ceased to be a living force in public opinion,
when France had become impregnated with false doctrines of
international pacifism and homeless cosmopolitanism, when (as she wrote
at the time) there were left of the faithful to wear the forget-me-not
of Alsace-Lorraine only "a few mothers, a few widows, a few old
soldiers, and your humble servant." But never, even in the darkest of
dark day