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THE ORDEAL of
Prince Eulenberg
by Lyn Pedersen
In that social recollection which we call history, many stories that once loomed large have been laid aside for others agreeing more adroitly with latterday explanations of the "causes" causes" of subsequent events.
Students of World War I, committed to the pat theory that only economic factors really move history, have discarded data not fitting the pattern and omitted from the record intrigues and indiscretions and once-famous scandals that were major turning-points in Germany's tragi-comic march to war, but which do not aptly reflect the "struggle for markets."
Thus, few people now remember Philip Eulenberg, a man once famed as the Kaiser's most intimate friend, the one man who might possibly have steered Germany away from war and destruction, the man bitterly blamed for what Germans then attacked as Wilhelm II's "soft" policies in world affairs, the man who was hounded to his death in a series of amazingly cruel trials charging that he was puppet-master to the Emperor, the victim of the most spectacular homosexual trials in history.
Looking back to the Los Angeles Examiner, Oct. 24, 1907, under four banks of headlines:
BERLIN: Oct 23.
The trial began here today of Maximilian Harden, editor of DIE ZUKUNFT, who is accused of libel by General Count Kuno von Moltke. The case involves the charges concerning the notorious "Round Table." Von Moltke is a nephew of the late famous Field Marshall Count von Moltke.
The complaint of von Moltke is that last November, Harden in his paper, which is one of the most radical in Germany, began to charge that Count Zu Eulenberg was the head of a clique at Court which banded together for the sole purpose of influencing the Kaiser politically.
Eulenberg and Moltke were named by Harden as members of the Round Table. Harden declared that the Prince and Count were also spiritualists in addition to being men of abnormal temperaments and habits.
It is reported in connection with the case that Crown Prince Frederick William made an exhaustive personal investigation of Harden's charges, reporting to his father, the Emperor, such findings that von Moltke, Zu Eulenberg and Lieutenant General von Hohenau saw fit to hand in their resigna-
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