NON-FICTION: Harden’s Contemporaries

I MEET MY CONTEMPORARIES— Maximilian Harden—Holt ($4).

The internationally famed editor of Die Zukunft (The Future) “meets” most of his contemporaries with intent to flay them. It is the opinion of the pre-War U. S. Ambassador to Germany, James W. Gerard, who prefaces the book, that Harden’s “power of delineating a personality is more than photographic,” that “the hidden thoughts and secret emotions” of men “are as plain to him as if he pierced their being with a mental x-ray.”

Let Editor Harden “meet,” “pierce” and “flay”:

Lloyd George. “O David of Manchester, reared in Wales . . . your strong point is that you believe everything you utter . . . at least at the moment when it rushes from your lips! . . . War-time is the very element in which men of your type flourish. . . . You feel yourself to be the redeemer of the island-empire. You consider every opponent a villain, and are convinced that no other genius ever produced such ideas as yours. . . .”

Clémenceau. “An Asiatic? At first glance he seems one . . . with his yellow skin, his saddle-nose between prominent cheekbones, and his Tartar moustache . . . a bully out of Brittany . . . an all too aged Cyrano . . . sitting by the fireside, in his peasant boots and grey suede gloves . . . uttering harsh words of scorn . . . the Prussianest of Frenchmen! . . . I could show you letters of German generals and princes who sigh: ‘If only we had a German Clémenceau!’ ”

Wilson. “The Western Powers scornfully reproached Mr. Wilson with being misled by German evasions . . . [Germans] looked upon him as a pawn of the English. . . . As neophyte in the highest office in the Republic, he made obvious mistakes. . . . But it must be remembered that he felt and thought—not only spoke—as no other government head had done before. . . .

“Be assured of this: On a not far distant day the young giant America will enwreathe the portrait of the man who placed upon it the burden of honor to fight for an ideal without the hope of material return. Never before in human history has this occurred.”

Hindenburg. [The Kaiser’s favorite] Captain Ludendorff . . . who was not even of the nobility, could not be given the position of Commander-in-Chief. To prevent friction and quarrels the distinction had to be conferred on some passive, easy-going general who would permit caustic, hard-headed Ludendorff, a neurasthenic with a will as well as muscles of steel, to have his own way. . . . Old General Paul von Hindenburg was on the pension list. . . . He would not disturb or irritate the inordinately egotistical and self-assured Ludendorff. . . . Hindenburg was appointed Commander-in-Chief.

“And then this quiet old man was showered with glory . . . the credit for four-fifths of which, at least, belonged to Ludendorff. . . . In every heart, on every tongue, there was but one name, Hindenburg. . . . Every maid in the most distant forester’s lodge knew that head, which the people call ‘a majestic brow of thunder,’ and the Kaiser, in his jealous rage, termed ‘a sergeant’s mug.’

“Who of us has ever seen a god on earth or even dared to dream of seeing one! Yet this is just what we have experienced. . . . Foch, the victor, went about Paris in uniform almost unnoticed; when Hindenburg, the vanquished, rode out, millions drunk with adoration were ready to strain their muscles to draw his carriage through the streets. . . .

“Paul of Tarsus was only one of the Apostles. He was not, like Paul von Hindenburg, of the divine lineage itself. . . . This old soldier, too illiterate to even educate himself by reading . . . rises in the glory of his godhead . . . President of the German Republic . . . and is surrounded by a swarm of blissful slaves.”

Germany at Armistice Time. “Our men are sallow, anemic, enfeebled; our weary women’s skin is loose and wrinkled, like the leather of unlubricated machinery belting. The children, brought up without milk, wither away. . . . Thus we have lived for years. . . .

“We crave no sympathy, but only a pallid smile can respond to the suspicion that . . . Germany . . . can at any visible date . . . set up a war machine.”

Other Subjects are Stinnes, King Peter of Serbia, Lenin, Bernhardt, Bonaparte in Adversity.

While still a mere stripling, Maximilian Harden attained the notoriety which has ever since been his by attacking Wilhelm der Zweite on the grounds of his private immorality and his public folly in “dropping the pilot,” Bismarck.

Wilhelm’s relations with Harden were highly interesting on three occasions: 1) The day when the Emperor had Harden clapped into a damp fortress at the mouth of the Vistula for lèse majesté. 2) The night on which the Imperial Chancellor secretly conveyed a large sum of money to release Prisoner Harden. 3) The day of Wilhelm’s abdication, when he declared: “Now Germany must send Harden to Versailles. He is my greatest enemy, and has been so from the beginning; but Germany has no better peace-maker.”

Harden was not sent. His comment upon those who did not send him is characteristic: “Whom the gods would destroy they first make blind.”

The doughty Maximilian sums himself justly, modestly and with vigor in the third person: “No man’s servant hath he been!”