The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1922-12-16
The Mistakes of the Kaiser
By RENE VIVIANI
Premier of France When the War Broke Out
Mcclure dictate.
WHENCE COMES WILLIAM WAR LORD OF EUROPE?

| take up my pen after having, nat
peror with care. / am going to answer
them, passing over what is negligible
therein; my desire is to make rapid
and exact synthesis, not table OF
contents Whenever necessary, | shall
make a resume of the outstanding
parts of these memoirs, at which, in
most cases, truth will fling denial.
/ shall endeavor to follow, amid con-
tradictions half-avowals and ineXplic-
able silences, the thread of these
pages, which are mostly lacking in the
proofs that were promised and eX-
pected.
l shall point the frightful mental
confusion, the even more frightful
blindness, and the contempt with which
the ex-Emperor affirms and writes
certainly as late as 1921, possibly in
1922-without paying the slightest
heed to the plentiful documents which
history has harvested in order to place
them at the feet of justice.
The book of the Emperor seems as
if it had been written in 1918, at the
time of his fall and flight, when we
did not know about most of the facts
and kilograms which he, the Emperor,
knew full well, since he had comment
ed upon them in notes which were at
times filthy.
Omissions Are Astounding.
What hopes are harbored by this
writer, who seems to handle the pen
even worse than the sword? He knows
nothing of the books of certain Ger
mans, whose consciences made them
courageous; of the 1919 revelations of
the new government of the Reich,
which have substituted for the first
! White Book, which contained SO docu-
ments, White Book composed of 521
documents; of the Bavarian releva-
/ lions; of the revelations of the Aus
! trian Red Book. He passes over in
/ silence the terrible dispatches of the
| Austrian ambassador at Berlin and
makes statements as if these dispatch
/ es had never existed. Yet he knows
about these things as well as We do;
/ in fact, he knows even more about
them than we, since, undoubtedly, i'm
portant documents were spirited away
from the Imperial Palace at the very
moment in 1918 when the august and
Heroic emperor assured his own safety
/ by means of headlong flight.
! Such are the Memoirs.
Add to this the untiring repetitions
of German propaganda, statements
which contradict each other on every
/ page, plain lies-and you will have an
exact idea, before putting your hands
upon it, of the imperial production to
which these rapidly-written pages,
based upon documents and upon proofs
will now seek to reply.
As is quite easily understandable
the emperor has harked back, in his
memoirs, to the first years of his
youth, hen-unfortunately for the
rldl-definitiv responsibility was
placed in his hands. We may follow
him back to those days, but hurriedly
since it is not possible to check his
statements. Moreover, the useful task
which we have set ourselves in writ
ing these pages cannot be confined
solely to this part of the memoirs
which, interesting as it might have
been in normal times, has been obliter
ated by the great drama which, after
having been staged by the emperor
was then presided over by him. Ev
erything, even what concerns the mos
exalted parsonage, is blunted and di
minished when placed beside the mon
strous realities of the war. And Is
even the din caused by the collapse o.
a throne and the downfall of dynasty
, in the midst of general contempt sucf
as to ring long II human ears when i
sounds simultaneously with the SIMS
tier tumult of armies on the march
armies hurting themselves on the foe
armies that fall, with Victors and van
pushed inextricably mixed, in {
Ihecatomb spread over four years?
Nevertheless. every stone helps il
building building, every investigation
/ in revealing truth.
, Whence Comes William?
Whence, then, comes the man, whit
. has led the world to the greatest dis
= aster in history, who would have hurl
ed it into the abyss if immortal gen
erations had not stood up in answe,
to the appeal to justice? Everybod!
: the most humble as well as tn
greatest, the purest as well as thu
most wretched, and, particularly, h
whose power for evil has distinguished
him from others-may deserve an in
vestigation into his past and even al
investigation reaching higher and fur
ther-probing into the annals of tn
race to which he belongs, his anteced
, ents, his forebears. BY what myste1
, ious processes was this soul formed