The Kaiser and English Relations
New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1926. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good / Good. Item #2332002
First edition. Jacket edges rubbed chips, tears and creases.Hauntingly pro-German gift note, bookplate on front free endpaper, gilt band on spine rubbed.
ix, 304 pp. Published three years before the outbreak of World War II. MR. BENSON has the English gift of telling a familiar story in an acceptable way. His experienced hand allows him to lead his narrative almost effortlessly through the tangle of Court and diplomatic history stretching from 1855 to beyond 1918; and his unerring taste avoids the garish and theatrical effects which Emil Ludwig chose as the main accents of his work on the same theme. Like Ludwig, Mr. Benson has composed a biographical portrait from a series of anecdotes and episodes drawn from a very scattered field — ranging from intimate letters and memoirs to out-and-out diplomatic history. The diplomatic episodes at times make a very confused pattern, as the author very properly has avoided sketching in the diplomatic background of these many years. In the end, also, he has hardly offered us any clear impression of the Kaiser’s actual influence in this field. We are kept moving rapidly over a very agitated surface of things, but only rarely are we given a look beneath the surface. - Atlantic
Price: $20.00