During the week the newspapers have contained extracts from a
book which the ex-Kaiser has written to defend himself and his country—but chiefly himself. It is a compilation rather than a book, and was meant for private circulation among his former officials and his friends. It gives a kind of bird's-eye view, arranged in parallel columns, of diplomatic events from 1894 to 1914. By presenting such summarized statements, which owing to their brevity do not explain themselves, and by omitting all the intrigues and rattlings of sabres which the Kaiser was continually causing to go on behind the scenes, anybody could make such a compilation prove anything. The Kaiser's succession of provocative speeches, his pugnacious dashes upon the African toast, his double-dealing with the Tsar while he was saying quite different things to France and Britain--all these things are ignored. It is the characteristic production of a man who is either extraordinarily confused mentally or extraordinarily crooked.
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