Kaiser Wilhelm’s recollections of his part in the First World War (reviewed here) was released in the Winter of 1922. Former French president Rene Viviani (1863 – 1925; leadership, 13 June 1914 – 29 October 1915) quickly responded with his own book that appeared the following spring – it was titled As We See It:
“We have known the Germans for nineteen hundred years, and we have never been able to notice much change in them. Whether they call themselves Germans, Ostrogoths, or Visigoths; whether they enroll themselves beside the Huns in the armies of Attila or put themselves under the leadership of the Prussians; whether they trick us Leipzig; whether they are defeated at Ligny or [are among] the conquerors at Waterloo; whether they surround us at Sedan or are crushed along the Marne; whether they falsify the Ems telegram in 1870 or violate Belgian neutrality in 1914, they are a people for whom war is for all time their national industry and for whom peace is only an armistice between wars…”
Click here to read The Spectator review of Kaiser Wilhelm’s war memoir.
