had little force. The foreign situation degenerated hopelessly between Holstein's schemings and Wilhelm's interference.

After 1894 Eulenberg was Ambassador to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was extremely popular in Vienna and despite Holstein's growing hate, was able to repair the strained relations between the empires.

Eulenberg's health declined sharply until, after lingering illness, he was forced in 1902 to resign, shortly after his mother's death, and retire to Liebenberg, where, except for brief excursions to Gastein (Austrian spa with radium thermal springs), he spent most of the next four years on what seemed to be his death bed. His resignation had been accepted only as a sort of leave, and during the few months when he was up and about he was recalled to Berlin and enmeshed in affairs of state.

Bulow, put in office by Eulenberg, had succumbed to Holstein's influence, and cooled toward the friend he once called his "soul sister." The Emperor also had grown slightly more formal Bulow still used Philip as a

persuader when the sovereign was unmanageable. There is a suggestion that the Kaiser, who disapproved of physical weakness, considered Philip's illness as something of a desertion. However, Wilhelm and his Queen visited Liebenberg once or twice a year.

Some writers have called Eulenberg an effeminate fop, a sycophant, courtier, a meddling dilettante and worse. His letters belie this. Passionately loyal to the Kaiser, as a subject and as a friend, he at first believed Wilhelm could be a good monarch. As this hope faded, he remained loyal to the man who was inescapably Emperor, whatever his failings, and who still was likeable, intelligent, well-meaning. Eulenberg tried hard and long. to protect" our poor, dear Emperor" from his own folly. Even if the Kaiser was not an effective ruler, the badly splintered Reichstag, the overambitious Army, the weak Chancellors or Geheimrat Fritz von Holstein offered no alternative. There no longer was an available Bismarck. That sort of man could not exist in Wilhelm's company. The only choice seemed to be to keep Germany from losing too many friends and to keep order at home. The growing prosperity could take care of the rest. Germany's population increased heavily and its industry doubled during Wilhelm's reign.

Being an Emperor's friend has disadvantages also. Holstein was not the only person jealous of Eulenberg's position, honors and apparently gay life. Such a prominence breeds envy and spite.

By 1906 Eulenberg's health was temporarily partly repaired. He returned briefly to Berlin where he was ceremoniously awarded the Black Eagle, the highest Prussian honor. At this time he engaged in contacts with Lecomte, the French Legate, and with Count Witte, rising star of Russian politics, aiming at halting the anti-German drift of these countries. He met some success till word got to Holstein, then prompting the reluctant Emperor through the stupid Morocco crisis Holstein intending to prove Britain and France couldn't cooperate. The Algeciras Conference left Germany stunned and isolated. Holstein had lost face and tendered his fiftieth resignation, hoping to scare his critics into silence. To his chagrin (this plot had always worked before) it was submitted by foreign secretary von Tschirsky to the Emperor, who gladly approved it. By luck or strategy, Chancellor Bulow apparently had suffered a dramatic stroke before the Reichstag. (Afraid of Holstein, he was reputedly subject to blackmail by him.)

Holstein was out, He didn't know whom to blame. The Chancellor, on his sick bed, insisted it was an oversight by Tschirsky. And perhaps Bulow (knowing Holstein's reputation for vindictiveness) suggested Eulenberg was responsible. The idea became an obsession with Holstein who began seeing a lot of Maximilian Harden, a gutter journalist formerly critical of Holstein. HOLSTEIN'S REVENGE

On May 1, 1906, Holstein wrote to Eulenberg that it would be damaging to be seen with a person of Eulenberg's homosexual repute, and accused him of causing Holstein's own dismissal.

9