Has poet facto memoirs are an entertaining if somewhat min•
leading form of history, and the war seems to be producing quite a crop of them. We cannot, of course, include among them The Berlin Court under William II., by Count Axel von Schwering (Cassell and Co., 16a. net), in view of the publishers' note at the beginning of the volume. From it we learn that, although the author's name is assumed, yet "the high personage, through whom this remarkable document came into our possession, declares that the intimacy which existed between the author and his Imperial master" was both long- standing and intimate. It is enough to add that the mysterious author shows in his diary how, after a lifetime of admiration for William II., he suddenly discovered in the hat weeks of July, 1914, that his Imperial master was a deliberate liar and a criminal of the blackest sort. After the war broke out " Count Axel" could bear it no longer and charged the Emperor to his face with the appalling results of his ambition and vanity. At midnight on the same date he brought him diary and his life to a conclusion with a bullet through hie brain. We may feel very grateful that the manuscript found its way safely to London.
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