Interviewing the Great

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLII, Issue 20587, 28 November 1936, Page 12 (Supplement)

Interviewing the Great

HOW MONARCHS AND DICTATORS BEHAVE

Emil Ludwig, the famous biographer and interviewer, was trying to interview King Victor Emmanuel of Italy. Tire King, however, had the jump on him, asking most of the questions. Ludwig turned the conversation to make the observation that Whilhelm I, in picking Bismark 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, Bismark, Whilhelm 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 told 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 Statesman “Statesmen and dictators, badgered by journalists, know the interview technique far better than the average interviewer. My flfteen-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 Kemal Pasha, the Turkish dictator to Napoleon,” Ludwig discloses. “No dictator is proof against this. Kemal Pasha pointed out the Corsican’s mistakes and explained bow he might have avoided them.

“One of Kemal’s bitterest enemies, the former Turkish dictator, Enver Pasha received me during the War. To test him, I slipped my hand in my pocket—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 to poor German children?”

Ludwig was caught flat-footed, knowing that the Communist doctrine is opposed to private charity. He took the chance and nodded in the affirmative. Stalin’s slow smile proved that he had guessed right.

Talking to a Monarch 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 Emmanuel 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 have some interesting news, or at least a good anecdote. The dramatic interview involves managed dialogue. “The uncertainty and arrogance of Austrian Counts was reflected on me in the cold and haughty stare with which they used to examine the neckties of people facing them. “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. “The Pope is the last sovereign at whose court the old etiquette is stlil rigorously observed. The visitor must appear in full dress and kneel at Pontiff’s feet unless he is given permission to rise. Pius XI. lets his visitors kneel; all conversation is out of the question. Pope Benebict XV. who received me alone in 1925, was a diplomat and a grand seigneur. I had feared the over-whelming pomp of the Vatican, but Benedict XV talked with me as man to man.” Tire 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 ingeniousness, the Hungarians through cunning.”