THE NETHERLANDS: Merciless Mackensen

Erect, kinetic and unservile, the great Feldmarschall August von Mackensen arrived, last week, at that nest of sycophants, the chateau of Wilhelm II in Doorn.

Before long Host Hohenzollern inquired of Guest Mackensen what evidences he had recently observed that the German people are eager for restoration of their Kaiser and Crown Prince.

At Doorn this stock question is still supposed to be answered unctuously and favorably. But August von Mackensen, the hard, the merciless, the man who whipped Rumania down upon bloody knees, answered Host Hohenzollern thus: “There is not the slightest evidence that the people desire Your Majesty’s return.”

Without a word, but flushing furiously, Wilhelm II turned and left the room. Returning an instant later, he cried: “You have shown lack of proper respect appearing before me not in uniform!”

“That is forbidden by Dutch law, Sire,” snapped Merciless Mackensen. “What I told you of the sentiments of the people is true. I see that I must take my leave.”

Two further incidents were reported to have thrown onetime All Highest Wilhelm into “paroxysms of rage” last week.

For one thing the notorious Russian gigolo, Alexander Dvorjanin Zoubkov, who married Wilhelm’s eccentric sister, Princess Victoria zu Schaumburg-Lippe (TIME, Sept. 28), sent to the Chateau at Doom a copy of his outrageous and scurrilous memoirs, inscribed:

To Wilhelm The Genius of Our Family

From Alex Your Affectionate Brother-in-Law

For another thing, Wilhelm of Doorn learned, last week, that Emil Ludwig’s savage best-seller Wilhelm Hohenzollern, The Last of the Kaisers (TIME, March 21, 1927) is being dramatized for simultaneous production in Manhattan and Berlin this winter. Last winter Berlin courts sustained a suit for injunction against Communist Producer Edwin Piscator (TIME, Dec. 26), which was brought by Wilhelm of Doorn to compel censorship of a stage “Kaiser” from whose mouth came drooling and silly words, punctuated by posturings.

Soothing balm was supplied by an obscure tribunal at Windhoek in the British Union of South Africa which last week restored to Wilhelm II two large farms illegally confiscated from him in 1920.