📘 Wilhelm Hohenzollern The Last of the Kaisers By Etnil Ludwig Author of Naf oleon, etc. Translated from the German by Ethel Colburn Mayne With 29 Illustrations G. P. Putnams Sons New York London The Knickerbocker Press 1927 WILLIAM TIIK SK ON1 To His Subjects PREFACE THIS book is a portrait of William the Second no more it presents neither his epoch, nor the whole story of his life. That it is too soon for such a delineation can scarcely be maintained in the seven years since his abdication the pace of events, the overthrow of accepted forms of govern ment, have brought to light a greater quantity of relevant documents than seven decades would hitherto have afforded us. In these years, some twenty volumes of German memoirs, together with the remarkable series of German Foreign Office Papers, have laid bare the greater part of what had been kept secret until now. To the illumination thus obtained, even the solitary missing link a volume from Prince Billows pen could add but little. Of William the Second, then, we know in these days not too little, but too much. His chronicler must forget the full extent of his own knowledge the details seen and heard by him, as a contemporary he must sacrifice a hundred anecdotes of which historians in the future will assuredly make use. For fairness sake, at any rate, we here design to let no adversary of the Emperor bear witness, but to construct our portrait wholly from his own deeds and words, together with the reports of those who stood in...