METHODS REVEALED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23014, 17 October 1936, Page 16

METHODS REVEALED

LUDWIG CONFESSES INTERVIEWING THE GREAT Emil Ludwig, the famous biographer and interviewer, was trying (says the Literary Digest) to interview King Victor Emmanuel of Italy. The King, however, had the jump on him, asking most of the questions. Ludwig turned the conversation to make the observation that Wilhelm I, in picking Bismarck as his Chancellor, had had the merit of choosing a genius. “Did he really choose him?” suddenly asked the King. ' Ludwig carefully repressed a smile. Certainly, Italy’s King had not chosen his Chancellor Mussolini, and the biographer easily swung into the lead. Using what he calls a naive approach,' the self-exiled German writer , has interviewed “ most of the great , men of our times.” He has written | biographies of Jesus, Goethe, Napoleon, Bismarck, Wilhelm 11. Lincoln, Mussolini, and Masaryk. He has no secret means of drawing out great men, who, he observes, are sometimes stupid; and, writing for Opera Mundi, he tells all. “ During the Great War I was a perfect ignoramus in political and military matters,” Ludwig confesses. ‘ I . could put questions to kings and generals which a better-informed man would not dare to pose.” (During the World War, Ludwig was living at Tessin, Switzerland, as correspondent for the Berlin Tageblatt.) CANNY STATESMEN “ Statesmen and dictators, badgered by journalists, know the interview technique far better than the average i interviewer. My 15-day conversations | with Mussolini took me a week to prepare. No reply of the Duce’s could take me unawares. I had at least three questions ready for any subject. Each morning I held rehearsals for the afternoon session with Mussolini, who gives perfectly rounded replies in a | firm voice, never raised, without repeating or correcting himself. “ I compared Kamal, the Turkish dictator, to Napoleon,” Ludwig discloses. “No dictator is proof against this. Kamal pointed out the Corsican’s mistakes and explained how he might have avoided them. “One of Kamal’s bitterest enemies, the former Turkish dictator, Enver Pasha, received me during the war. To test him, I slipped my hand into my pocket. . , ..... “ Enver instinctively imitated my gesture—obviously afraid of sudden attack. Such a reaction would be impossible in Stalin or Mussolini.” From the Russian dictator, Mr Ludwig heard a surprising question. “You’re going to make money out of this interview,” Stalin said. “Would you be prepared to give some of that to poor German children? ” Ludwig was caught flat-footed, knowing that the Communist doctrine : is opposed to private charity. He took 1 the chance and nodded in the affirma- ; tive. Stalin’s slow smile proved that he had guessed right “Kings are rarely interesting to the interviewer,” Ludwig notes, and tells of a “vast ball of flesh” he interviewed, the last but one of the Sultans of Turkey. The Sultan was reluctant to talk, wanted Ludwig and a friend who was present to describe the battles of the Dardanelles. USED A QUOTATION Time was valuable; Ludwig stuck

in annotation of General von Moltke on destiny. “Forgetting all about battles,” Ludwig reports, “the Sultan spoke for several minutes, quoting a similar Turkish saying on the caprice of fate. The next morning the whole world knew what the Sultan of Turkey thought about fate.” The famous interviewer found out that “Your Majesty” is no way to address a king. “They all are sick of the stereotyped formula.” He got King Victor and the late King Albert of Belgium to talk by ridding himself of the rigid conventions of etiquette, getting their faces to light up like ordinary mortals. • “When dealing with a man like David Lloyd George, who is always eager for curiosities, the interviewer must always have some interesting news, or at least a good anecdote. The dramatic interview involves managed dialogue. “ Secondary details throw light on the subject’s personality. At a banquet in Russia I saw Kalinin, President of the Soviet Union, push away with contempt an elaborate menu and order fish soup, a Russian national dish. His high position had not affected the simple tastes of this Rusi sian peasant, I “I saw Leon Trotsky, exiled on the I island of Prlnkipo, shut a window against a violent wind with such skill and care that I concluded: Here is a man of practical genius, not a dreamer or a philosopher. “The uncertainty and arrogance of Austrian counts was reflected in the cold and haughty stare with which they used to examine the neckties of people facing them. HE CHASED A FLY "I saw Charles IV, last Austrian Emperor, during his coronation in Budapest, with the crown actually on his «head, chase a fly away from his face with a gesture of annoyance. This apparently insignificant gesture , . . proved that the time when kings , . . were gods was definitely past. I “The Pope is the last Sovereign at | whose court the old etiquette is still rigorously observed. The visitor must appear in full dress and kneel at the Pontiff’s feet unless he is given permission to rise. Pius XI lets his visitors kneel; all conversation is out of the question. Pope Benedict XV, i who received me alone in 1925, was a diplomat and a grand ‘ seigneur.’ I had feared the overwhelming pomp' of the Vatican, but Benedict XV talked with me as man to man.” Not only the mighty of Europe have fallen before Emil Ludwig’s adroit questioning. He writes: “ I drew from Rockefeller his ideas on wealth by telling an anecdote at his table. Another time, Henry Ford and I were waiting in the street. A small Ford car drew up in front of us. I pretended not to recognise it. and remarked: ‘ I think this is slightly larger than your model.’ That set Mr Ford talking, and his next sentence: ‘ I have made 14,000,000 of them in my life,’ showed that he considered that little car the symbol of his existence.” Ludwig lost an interview once. “I inadvertently sat on the edge of Mr Hoover’s bare and shiny desk. Mr Hoover looked at me in stupefaction, and when he later received me at the i White House spoke to me in a cold, distant manner.” i The biographer knows his subjects and their foibles. He says: “Statesmen are more talkative than writers, and writers more liberal with words than scientists. The eloquence of the subject grows in direct ratio to his need for publicity. Politicians are the most inclined to lie.” And for interviewing skill, he picks “ the French, with an easy, but precise language, followed by the Americans and the Hungarians. The Americans succeed through ingenibusness, the Hungarians through cunning.”