Effeminate War Lord

Hereunder TIME reviews collectively books pertinent to FOREIGN NEWS.

Emil Ludwig, who wrote about Napoleon (TIME, Feb. 28) now presents a Kaiser.^1

"In the following pages," warns Biographer Ludwig, "neither Socialist nor alien voices will be heard--only the voices of the Emperor, his relatives and friends, his Chancellors, Ministers and Generals, his courtiers and officials." Out of their own mouths these men condemn themselves--but of very different offenses than were attributed to them during the War. Says the author: "The War-years, to which the youngest reader can bear witness, receive the least extended treatment--for they were merely the logical epilogue to the psychological prologue." Since the author virtually steps down and lets his characters tell their own story, the book is an invaluable mine of quotations from the memoirs and autobiographies of Imperial Germany's great men. Many of these works are fresh from German presses, and quite unobtainable in English.

Effeminacy Hypothesis. William II, says Author Ludwig, possesses "the gifts of a high-strung nature beyond a doubt." With his incurable, withered arm he should have turned to a brilliant civil career; but, alas, the military tradition of Prussia demanded as Crown Prince a dashing cavalry officer. Worse still his mother, Victoria^2 (daughter of British Queen-Empress Victoria), was repelled by her son's deformity, hated him, and once remarked inhumanly to an Austrian nobleman: "You can scarcely imagine how I admire your handsome, intelligent and graceful Crown Prince^3 when I see . . . my uncouth, lumpish son William."

If a mother could taunt thus savagely, the attitude of the Court may be imagined. Little Wilhelm, brilliant, neurotic, effeminate, afraid, was driven to wrench up the very roots of his personality. He would show them! He did. After a purgatory of physical suffering he learned to use his withered arm, to ride, to swagger and to bluster--though he drank little, and did not, says Herr Ludwig, acquire the manly art of "talking bawdy." At last, even grizzled old Wilhelm I, his grandfather, said of his horsemanship at maneuvers, "Well done! I could never have believed you could do it!"

But Author Ludwig comments: "In reality, the moral victory over his physique was his destruction ... it was but the prelude to countless parades and processions, resounding orations and menacing gestures ... all his life to seem what he was not."

Eulenburg the Proof. Is Biographer Ludwig a shrewd Clarence Darrow, speciously pleading that the culprit's inferiority complex drove him to War Lordhood? To prove beyond a doubt the tragic duality of the Kaiser's personality, Herr Ludwig presents as secondary only to the Emperor in interpretive importance, his bosom friend for 30 years, Count (later Prince) Philip zu Eulenburg-Hertfield.

"Certain it is," declares Herr Ludwig, "that at 27 Prince Wilhelm lost his heart. ... [He had married at 22, took no mistresses.] Suppressed sentimentality needed a field for ardour, fancy yearned for an artistic friendship. . . . And he found it all in Count Philip Eulenburg, to whom he was most fervently attached. . . . Whether his nature was inherently incapable of devoted affection for a women ... he followed the fashion of his time and group, wherein there was an abundance of male friendships."

The Count was "a tall supple figure, indefinite features, eyes which in Bismarck's opinion were enough to spoil the best breakfast, large soft hands, a Narcissus-like grace of bearing . . . brilliantly witty. . . . This remarkable, many-sided man ... is the seductive picture of an aristocratic Cagliostro, formed to bewitch the young Prince." Soon Eulenburg could write in his diary: "The Prince's affection for me was an ardent one . . . my musical performances drove him into almost feverish, raptures . . . always sitting beside me and turning the pages . . . and he loved to greet me with turns and phrases from my verses. . . ."

As the All Highest's reign lengthened Court-Marshal Count Robert von Zedlitz-Triitzschler made curious entries in his diary: "Suddenly Count Hiilsen-Haeseler appeared, dressed as a ballerina (as he had done once or twice before) and began to dance. Everyone was vastly delighted, for the Count's dancing is superb, and there was something quite out of the common in seeing the Chief of the Military Cabinet, got up as a woman, perform a pas-seul."

Finally revelations in the press by Editor Maximilian Harden compelled the Kaiser to repudiate his closest friends. Wilhelm declared: "It has come to my ears that Eulenburg, Hohenau, Kuno-Moltke [etc.] are perverts. I have no further use for them. This must be made a moral example of before all the world."

Thus ended the reign over Wilhelm II of the brilliant if blighted men who had kept him from war because their own fundamental weakness called for peace. With their passing the Kaiser was drawn into the war, thinks Ludwig, against his will but as the logical consequence of his self deception in picturing himself a War Lord.

^1 WILHELM HOHENZOLLERN, THE LAST OF THE KAISERS-- Emil Ludwig--Putnam ($5).

^2 Her husband's intimate journal has just been published: THE WAR DIARY OF THE EMPEROR FREDERICK III--Stokes ($5). Translated and edited by A. R. Allinson.

^3 Archduke Rudolf, son of Franz Josef.