Max's Memoirs

"Max," said Wilhelm II ruminatively one day to the Prince of Baden, "Max, do you think there were any great men who lived before Agamemnon?"*

"Your Majesty," cried Prince Max with a twinkle, "I should think it was not a question whether there were great men before Agamemnon, but whether there have been any since." Then, as the jest struck home, and Wilhelm flushed angrily, Prince Max chuckled, broke into his bubbling infectious laugh. Not even angered royalty could continue serious; and, so far did Wilhelm II forgive Prince Max this and many another sally, that it was Maximilian von Baden whom the Kaiser appointed his last Imperial Chancellor-then fled to Spa. . . .

This Max, the man who announcedthe Kaiser's abdication when mobs were surging in the Berlin streets, published his memoirs, last week. He has abdicated long since as heir to the Grand Duchy of Baden, but still he is "Prince Max" to the Germans. A wise jester-one of the wisest-his bons mots are famed:

1) "I wonder who invents all the lies"; 2) "It is harder to be bad than good, but our enemies flatter us that we always take the trouble to be bad."

Such a man could not write dull memoirs, but the cream of his new book, not yet translated from the German, is a quiet little story simply told.

"I will not forget," writes Prince Max, "the moment of my leave-taking from Friedrick Ebert. . . .* He had suggested that I might assume the office of German Regent. . . . This I felt obliged to refuse, but as I left the room it was impossible to resist turning back:

"Herr Ebert, a last word. I confide the German Reich to your care. . . .'

"Very simply Ebert replied, 'I have lost two sons for this Reich.'

"It was enough," concludes Prince Max, "I knew that in his hands the Fatherland was safe."

*Haughty prehistoric Greek hero . He quarreled with several goddesses , with Achilles and with his own wife who flung a net over him while he was taking: a bath , and stabbed him to death .

* The Socialist onetime saddlemaker who became the first German President after the revolution, and the man to whom Prince Max, as Imperial Chancellor, was obliged to band over the Government.