"DEUTSCHE MACHTHABER."
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] Sin,—Your correspondent who writes under the name of " Onlooker," summarising a work published in Berlin by Herr Martin under the title of " Deutsche Machthaber," writes as follows in your issue of October 15th with regard to the famous interview with the German Emperor published by the Daily Telegraph in 1908 :— " The material collected was entrusted to an English writer, Mr. Harold Spender, who had recently visited Germany with Mr. Lloyd George and had made the acquaintance of several German officials. Mr. Spender `worked up' the facts and statements sub- mitted to him into literary form, and the result of his labours was typewritten and sent to the Emperor. The Emperor made some emendations and referred it to his Chancellor, who gave orders that it should be at once examined in the Department of Foreign Affairs in order to verify the statements from an historical point of view. This was done ; the statements were verified in the Department, and the document returned to Mr. Spender, who then took charge of its publication. It was first offered to the Daily Mail, but refused by that journal. Mr. Lawson, however, accepted it on behalf of the Daily Telegraph."
I beg to give to all these statements an absolute and unqualified denial. There is not a word of truth in any one of them. I did not see the interview published by the Daily Telegraph
until three or four days after it had appeared in that journal, and I saw no version of it whatever, in any form, until it had been printed and issued to the public from the office of the
Daily Telegraph.—I am, Sir, &c., HAROLD SPENDER. 47 Canspden House Court, Gloucester Walk, W.
[We very much regret to have given currency to a state- ment which turns out to have been entirely unfounded. We presumed that Herr Martin was dealing not with rumours but with reality when he made so specific and so positive a state- ment. We may point out, however, that the writer of the letter to the Spectator in which Herr Martin's book was in effect reviewed clearly stated that no aspersion whatever was
cast on Mr. Spender, who was presumed to have acted with the sole desire to improve the relations between Britain and
Germany. No one who knows Mr. Harold Spender, or who has watched his career as a journalist, would ever dream of his acting a part inconsistent with a high sense of honour, or of patriotic intention.—ED. Spectator.]
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