IMPORTANT BOOK TELLS STORY OF GERMANY’S LAST DAYS

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6808, 11 January 1929, Page 10

IMPORTANT BOOK TELLS STORY OF GERMANY’S LAST DAYS

LONDON. We are getting more translations of the important German books and none of higher importance than the two volumes of Memoirs of Prince Max of Baden (Constable). This is the record of a patiently honest man, who in spite of his aristocratic birth and his being heir to the throne of a German State, yet was informed with Liberal principles which he struggled and struggled hard to impose on those in authority in Germany during the war. And though born a German Prince, he was no militarist. Indeed his time until, owing tc these very qualities of his, he was called almost by acclaim to the Gcrmas Chancellorship in 1918, was devoted to the Red Cross, and throughout that time his moderating influence in his country was scorned because of his pacifism. No Undertaking About Belgium. The broad outlines of these memoirs are already known through the original German publication, but at no time more than the present do they deservemore careful reading, for they are so detailed that they produce au ineffable picture if his struggle against the jingo supreme command auu the political inertia of the Government. Throughout these volumes we see his heartrending attempts to move the Supreme Command to make a statement that Belgian sovereignty and integrity would bo restored. They remained deaf even after that fatal day on which Ludendorff’s nerve gave way and he bcseeched the Government to ash for au armistice. Within lour days of that lirst throwing up of tho sponge Lutlendorff admitted taut from a purely military point of view, his demand was unnecessary.

Prince Max, therefore, had every' justification for his dictum: —“I saw clearly that in 1917 —for wo as well as tho Allies had lost tho prospect of a rapid victory—the war had become a test of nerves. The statesman who would lead his people safely through the crisis was —tno best psychologist.” His memoirs prove that if nothing else. The second volume is entirely taken up with the events of October and November, 191 S, when Ludendorff uid little save reiterate “my army must rest” and beg the Government somehow to obtain au armistice—not to bring an end to the war, but as a time for recuperation only. Evidence is added of tho vanity and pusillanimity of the Kaiser. When Prince Max, having dutifully obtained his father’s and tho Kaiser’s consent to taking on himself the Chancellorship, desired to have the Kaiser at hand in Berlin to sign documents required before he (Max) could take action, at a moment when prompt action was essential, the War Lord fled to tho midst of his military junta and would consent to none of the steps which Prince Max regarded as essential if negotiations with President Wilson were to be undertaken with any hope of success. Entrenched at Spa, the Kaiser objected to his kinsman’s best efforts to save the army, the Monarchy, and the Imperial throne itself. Boeing clearly that Wilson would break off negotiations unless the submarine warfare was abandoned, Prince Max threatened to resign office unless the Navy capitulated. “If I go,” he said, “the Cabinet will fall to pieces, and then comes the revolution.” The Kaiser nevertheless gave his consent most unwillingly. The Impossible Emperor.

The Kaiser contrived to baulk Prince Max to the very last. Even when tho Supreme Command saw that abdication was necessary and that the allies would consent to an armistice on no other terms, and the Kaiser had by telephone accepted abdication, the War Lord nulliiicd his consent by the qualification that he abdicated his Kaisership but not his throne of Prussia.

One asks oneself whether, if Prince Max had taken more upon himself and not waited so much on the Kaiser’s consent, he would not have saved his country from some of tho evils of revolution which were even then to be seen. For instance, he refused to announce the Kaiser’s abdication before obtaining Wilhelm’s consent, because it would look as if he (Prince Max) were ambitious for himself. On November 8, when the revolutionaries were marching on Berlin itself, under the threat of the Social Democrats’ ultimatum, Prince Max made his personal appeal to the Kaiser: “Y'our abdication has become necessary to save Germany from civil war. . . The great majority of the people believe you to be responsible for the present situation. This belief is false, but is held. . . My protecting hand can no longer shield the occupant of the Throne. . . Once blood has flowed the cry for vengeance will everywhere be heard. The troops arc not to be depended on. At Cologne power is in tho hands of the Workers and Soldiers Council. At Brunswick the Red Flag flies from the palace. At Munich the Republic has been proclaimed. . . We are steering straight for civil war.”

Even this proved unavailing. “His Majesty announced his unshakable intention not to give way. At the head of his army he would reduce his country to order; the necessary instructions had already been given. In. a fury of indignation he rejected all my proposals. I begged tho Kaiser to dismiss me and appoint a new Chancellor immediately, now that I no longer possessed his confidence. The Kaiser refused with the words: ‘You sent out the armistice offer. You will have to put your name to the conditions.’ ” It was only because of the accident that the telephone conversations on abdication had hidden the Kaiser’s ‘‘reservation” as to the Prussian crown that Prince Max did at once announce the Kaiser’s abdication and cleared the way for conversations between the Allies and a Germany which had a Prince Max as its Chancellor. But it was his very character which prevented Max from imposing on others the i clearer and better course which he himself would have followed. Prince Max had already decided to hand over the I Chancellorship to Herr Ebert, refusing * even to remain on as an Administrator , of the Empire. “I have often discussed the question 1

in later days/' ho concluded, “asking myself again and again whether by accepting the Administracy on the 9th of November I could save the Monarchy. The results have always been to conlirm what I thought at the time: I could have taken this road had I been appointed by the Kaiser as his deputy; an attempt at a coup d’etat must suffer shipwreck on my own conscience.’’ There is much more one would like to say of these Memoirs, and Messrs. Constable, in making them available in an English translation, have done a great national service in showing us the struggle behind the scenes in Germany and the difficulty with which Liberal ox democratic opinion made itself effective during that time of unparalleled stress,