MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
ONE of the charming things aboutliving to a great age and know- ing a large number of important people must be that, within the space of one's own lifetime, one is able to observe the fluctua- tions of human renown. It is a distressing fact that such people as princes of the blood royal, who from their infancy are brought into intimate contact with the leaders of their century, do not often develop any marked taste for celebrities. They generally prefer the company of their own relations or of those dim but affable creatures who spend their lives in courts. King Edward VII was a striking exception to this general rule. No lion-hunter that ever figured in society possessed such a zest for meeting interesting people ; he would cross continents, and even brave the disapproval of his mother and her Ministers, in order to have a few minutes' conversation with some famous man. True it is that his recorded remarks upon such interviews are not illuminating ; he suffered from the nineteenth-century inability to describe, or even to notice, the peculiarities of individual character; He did not observe, or at least he did not record, the manner in which these people spoke or how they moved their heads and hands. He does not mention the soft tones in which Napoleon III would utter his melancholy remarks, nor does he refer to the high boyish falsetto of Bismarck's voice. Yet few men in history, not even Francis Joseph, can have been personally acquainted with so vast a range, so infinite a variety, of human beings. As an adolescent he had lunched with Metternich and heard with his own ears the strident, arrogant voice by which the great Napoleon had alternately been fascinated and enraged. He had driven down the Avenue de l'Iinperatrice beside the Empress Eugenie with the little Prince Imperial facing them upon the strapontin. He had spoken to Pio Nono, Garibaldi, Gambetta and Pasteur ; he had played blind ,man's buff with Carlotta, Empress of Mexico, and backgammon with the 'Sultan of Turkey ; he had walked in the woods with Clemenceau, at the time when that fierce patriot was regarded as a dangerous Communist ; and he remembered the days when William II was a dear little nephew in a white sailor suit. Since he was a man of high intelligence he profited much from these encounters.
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The lavish personality of Edward VII has not as yet received sufficient tribute. During the long years when he was deliberately prevented by Queen Victoria from takieg any serious part in public affairs the value of his personality was unrealised; he was regarded merely as an eminent social figure and his immense, if repressed, vitality was frowned upon by Cabinet Ministers and criticised in the public prints. The glamour of his ten years' reign has given a somewhat meretricious sheen to his reputation. Yet in fact he pos- sessed the qualities, if not of a statesman, then certainly of a first- class diplomatist. Even as a young man he was in advance of his contemporaries in foreseeing the Prussian danger and in working patiently, and with astonishing tact and perseverance, for unity with France and Russia. The popular title of "Edward the Peace- maker" was not entirely unmerited ; he really did strive to adjust the balance of power in such a manner as would render the forces of peace and order unchallengeable by any adventurer. Yet even in my own lifetime I have seen the renown of Edward VII traversing three distinct phases. I am old enough to recall the hang-over of Victorian prudery, when he was regarded as self-indulgent and Indiscreet. I can well recall the period of his reign when at home he was hailed as a most popular monarch and when abroad he was assumed to possess an international influence far greater than his constitutional position would have enabled him to exert. And today he is remembered as a genial figure, and the epithet " Edwardian " has become for the middle-aged a haunting memory of forgotten riches, and for the young a description of modes and manners which are wholly out of date. * * * * Even stranger are the fluctuations in the reputation of the German Emperor, William II. By the older Victorians he was regarded as the Queen's German grandson who in tragic circumstances and in extreme youth had succeeded to the Empire which his grandfather
had forged. By the later Victorians he was admired as the young man who had possessed the courage to get rid of Bismarck and at the same time reproved for his unfilial attitude towards his mother. Already by the end of the century this amicable family photograph was being replaced in men's minds by a more dramatic presentation. People began to look upon him as an arrogant and reckless young man, flashing fire .from his eagle helmet, seeking intemperately to embroil the nations of the world. There then followed a curious reversion to the old family photograph. The Emperor had hurried to the bedside of his dying grandmother ; pale and solemn he had walked behind her coffin through the streets ; for a short time there- after he was regarded by the British public as a cicise relation and a friend. There then followed a series of provocative actions ; the Tangier visit, the Daily Telegraph interview, the German naval estimates and Agadir ; the old suspicions and resentments of -the days of the Kruger telegram returned with renewed force. The Kaiser, as he was called, became a portent of coming danger ; his speeches and his telegrams, which were of unexampled vaunting, spread wide alarm. And after 1914 he became the demon of malignity against whom our hatred was concentrated and whose execution was demanded at the hustings. Suddenly this resentment subsided ; the terrifying picture of the armed Emperor with his defiant moustaches was replaced by he gentler portrait of a bearded old man planting roses in the garden at Doom.
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The vicious biography of Emil Ludwig, the malicious memoirs of Prince Billow, might well have represented the last verdict upon William II. But Clio is of all the muses the most indefatigably just. A new representation, or more accurately n fresher inter- pretation, of this gifted but unfortunate man is gradually emerging. I have been reading this week an extensive and highly intelligent review of Erich Eyck's Das Personliche Regiment Wilhehns II which forms the main article in the current issue of The Times Literary Supplement. I have not as yet been able to obtain the book itself, but it is obvious from the review that serious students are beginning to forna a more accurate and a far juster estimate of the Emper'or's actions and character. He was a man devoid of reticence and his public speeches were histrionic and often foolish. The marginal comments, or Rand bemerkungen, which he scribbled hastily upon the papers submitted to him (and which were with fiendish delight published by the Weimar Republic) suggest an impulsiveness and a lack of ordinary restraint which are in truth deplorable. Yet the intelligence of William II is not to be judged by these impetuous othbursts, which all too often were designed to flatter the German public or to impress the bureaucrats. Essentially, William II war a far wiser man than many of his ministers. The misfortune was, not that he imposed a personal policy upon the German people, but that he allowed popular clamour to override his own judgement. His sensitive, almost feminine, temperament rendered him all too responsive to the nervous excitability of the German nature ; he became, as the reviewer acutely remarks, not a despot so much as a medium. It was his subservience to, not his domination of, public opinion which brought his ruin.
* * * * Of the many fluctuations which the repute of William II has under- gone,. perhaps the strangest is the almost utter oblivion into which his name has fallen in Germany. I can recall the time when he and his sons and family were the idols of the German people. His flight into Holland and his second marriage did much, of course, to damage his reputation ; but the real cause of this oblivion is that he did not succeed. Unconsciously perhaps, the Germans feel that he became for them the symbol of a false and highly dangerous ambition ; they prefer to forget that symbol. kis perhaps a fortunate thing that the Germans should be so disloyal l5 their own legends.
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