June 27, 1918 
Land & Water 
1 1 
The Kaiser: Mad or Bad ? By Charles Mercier 
IT is often said, especially by persons who are not 
qualified to express an opinion, that the Kaiser is mad, 
or must be mad ; and still more often that he is a 
degenerate. The term a "degenerate" has never been 
defined. It is a quasi-saientific term of abuse, em- 
ployed to fling at anyone of whose conduct or character we 
•disapprove, and in this sense it is no doubt correctly applied 
to the Kaiser ; but, putting abuse on one side, and speaking 
with strict scientific accuracy, is the Kaiser mad? 
This question has occupied my mind at intervals since 
long before the war, for undoubtedly there have been incidents 
in his career that, as they have been reported, have raised a 
strong suspicion of madness — a strong suspicion, but no 
more, and a suspicion, even a strong suspicion is of little 
value. My desire has been to form such an opinion as I 
should form of a patient brought to my consulting- room for 
the purpose, and subjected to a searching examination such 
as I am accustomed to make ; an opinion of a strictly 
scientific character, founded upon indisputal^le facts, and 
formed with bias or prejudice one way or the other. Such 
an opinion could not fail to be both interesting and valuable ; 
but such an opinion I have been unable to form, for the 
necessary data were not to be had. 
Whether a person is mad may be very easy or very difficult 
to determine. It does not always need a personal interview 
for its determination. Such a letter as now lies before me — a 
letter without formal beginning or ending, bringing vague 
but horrible accusations against a multitude of persons, 
named and unnamed, of persecuting the writer by means of 
lightning flashes and red flashes transmitted through walls 
and ceilings, accompanied by voices, dreams, and night- 
mares, and lasting for a quarter of a century without inter- 
mission — such a letter is of itself conclusive of the madness of 
the wTiter ; but there are cases in which repeated personal 
interviews and a minute ])ersonal history leave one still in 
doubt whether the dividing hne between sanity and madness 
has been crossed, or whether, if it has, the sojourn on the 
wrong side has been sufficiently prolonged to warrant certi- 
fication. Tfiis being so, I am always entertained when I hear 
people who have never seen a madman in their lives, assert 
positively of some other person whom also they have never 
seen, and who, like the Kaiser, may be near the border line, 
that "of course " he is mad, or must be mad. 
A common but erroneous opinion, which it has taken me 
more than a quarter of a century to dissipate from the minds 
of my fellow experts, is that madness consists in disorder of 
mind. There could scarcely be a greater mistake. Madness 
consists, not in what a man thinks or believes, but in what 
he does ; not in his opinions, whether deluded or not, but in 
his action. Conduct is the test ; and that conduct alone is 
mad that exhibits disorder in the process of adapting one- 
self to one's circumstances. 
Consequently, in forming an opinion whether a man is 
sane or mad, it is necessary to take into account not only 
what he does, but also the circumstances in which he does it. 
To take a very simple case : suppose a man in good health 
sits still all day and all night, taking no food, and bawling 
at the top of his voice ; if he were in ordinary circumstances 
— that is to say, in his own house, surrounded by his family 
and his comforts — we might conclude that he is mad, or 
must be mad, to behave in such a way ; but suppose he has 
fallen into a pit in a lonely place and broken his legs, we 
must revise our j udgment on a consideration of his circum- 
stances. 
So it is with the Kaiser. In forming an opinion of his 
sanity or madness, we must take into consideration not 
what he thinks or beheves, which we can only conje<;ture, 
but what he does, as to which we have more or less trust- 
worthy information ; and in estimating his conduct, we must 
never lose sight of the circumstances in which he acts, and 
never fail to take account of these circumstances. The 
dominating circumstance oj the Kaiser's life is thai he is the 
German Emperor. 
He is the Emperor of a people whom we may, if we please, 
stigmatise as degenerate, and who are at any rate very differ- 
ent from ourselves. This dominating circumstance is con- 
stantly ignored, and the German Emperor is judged as if he 
were the monarch of some people like ourselves. If the 
English King- Emperor were to act as the German Emperor 
acts ; if he were to change his dress a dozen times a day : if 
he were for ever boasting and bragging and calling God to 
witness what a splendid creature he is ; if he were for ever 
rattling his sabre and blustering about mailed 'ists and 
shining armour ; if he were to order his soldiers to give no 
quarter, and so forth, we might well question his sanity ; 
for the aim of a king must be to inspire tlie respect, the 
loyalty, and the devotion of his subj ects ; and if a king of 
England were to behave thus, he would inspire only dislike, 
disgust, and contempt. But the Kaiser is not King of 
England. He, is German Emperor, and the Germans like 
his conduct. It suits them. The more he brags and postures 
and prances before them, the more they admire him, and 
the more loyal and devoted they become. There is no 
evidence of madness, then, in this. 
Abuse of Hospitality 
In this country, or in any other country on the face of the- 
earth except Germany, a man who should abuse the hos- 
pitality of a generous host by introducing spies into the 
house of that host, and plotting against him while enjojdng 
his hospitality, would be execrated and despised as the vilest 
of scoundrels. An Ojibbeway or a Pathan would be driven 
from his tribe for such conduct. The lowest savages respect 
the binding obligation of hospitality ; and to eat a man's 
salt or to break bread with him is a sacred treaty of peace. 
But the Germans do not take this view, and the Kaiser is 
the German Emperor. 
The Germans see in such conduct nothing to condemn, but 
much to admire. They look upon it as evidence of superior 
astuteness. They laugh at the confiding simplicity of the 
hosts. They admire the conduct of the German Ambassador 
to "those idiotic Yankees," and they worship their Emperor 
for his perfidy towards Edward VII. If, therefore, we 
regard the conduct of the Kaiser in relation to the dominating 
circumstance tliat he is Emperor at the head of the German 
people, we find no want of adaptation to this circumstance. 
On the contrary, the adaptation is complete and perfect, 
and therefore the question of his madness does not arise. 
If the King of England, the President of the French Republic, 
or the President of the United States were to act so — I 
apologise to them for the supposition — they might well be 
considered mad, and it would be charitable so to consider 
them, for sucti conduct would be so alien to the opinions and 
sentiments of the peoples that they govern as scarcely to be 
explainable on any other ground ; but there is nothing in it 
alien to the opinions or sentiments of the Germans. It is 
what they are taught and trained to do. It is what each 
one of them who finds himself in" a foreign country does in 
his own humble way to the best of his ability. The Kaiser 
shows no madness in this. 
No. So far there is no evidence of madness. It is true 
that other incidents are reported, such as that of his capering 
in crown and sceptre on the sands of Ostend, and causing 
photographs of himself in this unseemly e.xercise to be dis- 
tributed to his troops, that are more strongly suggestive of 
madness ; but in the first place, the incident, though reported 
on fairly good authority, is not beyond doubt ; and in the 
second, it may be that even if it is true, it would excite 
nothing but admiration among the Germans. It is difficult 
to imagine any act of their Kaiser, that the Germans would 
not approve and admire. 
B it if we seek the (ffi. ity of the Kaiser, not to the mxdtnan, 
bit to the criminal, ue are on much firm:r ground,. More 
nonsense has been written about cnminals than, perhaps, 
on any other subject ; but though the doctnnes of Lombroso, 
Garofalo, and the rest of the Italian school, and even those 
of I'^ere and the French school of criminologists are now 
abandoned, there remains a residuum of truth in the doctrine 
of the existence of "instinctive" criminals. There are, 
undoubtedly, persons who are born without a rudiment of the 
moral sense, and who grow up without its ever becoming 
developed in them. Such persons I have called "moral 
imbeciles," and under this title they have been provided for, 
at my instance, in the Mental Defectives Act. 
A study of these "instinctive criminals," or "moral 
imbeciles," shows that between their moral and intellectual 
peculiarities and those of the Kaiser there is a very close 
similarity. The moral imbecile or instinctive criminal is 
distinguished from other men in the first place by his want of 
the moral sense, or his moral insensibihty. To him, right 
and wrong are empty words, or, if they have any meaning, 
right is that which is profitable to him, wrong is that which 
is unprofitable to him. I have sketched his cliaracter in my 
book on Insanity, and in other places, and when 1 reperuse these 
descriptions I am struck with their applicability to the Kaiser. 
