hints. While Hohenlowe was Chancellor, Holstein discovered Eulenberg had been subjected to blackmail by a Munich bathhouse operator. He got this information to the Chancellor and had it inserted in the Berlin police records, but continued his personal intimacy with Eulenberg. Philip gradually learned to keep his distance.

Berlin was filled with rumors about the Geheimrat. "The man with the hyena eyes," he was called, or "the spectre." Described as womanish, long suspected of homosexuality (chiefly for his brief passions for minor clerks) he was reputed to be engaged in shady stock-market deals, to be blackmailing every other man in the government. Caprivi hated and feared him. Hohenlowe used him. Bulow fell completely under his spell stories were common that blackmail formed the base of their relationship. The Kaiser despised him.

His hysterical conviction that everyone about him was plotting a Bismarck comeback, his pathological hatred of England and his antipathy for individual Austrian moderates constantly ensnarled Imperial policy.

The first Morocco crisis was his handiwork. He was convinced England would back down, isolating France and leaving Germany free for a big grab in Africa. When the scheme backfired, the furore in Germany almost toppled Bulow and the Throne itself. At this point the Emperor gladly accepted Holstein's resignation, and Holstein teamed up with Harden for revenge.

ABOUT THE CHARGES

As in most cases of men publicly accused of homosexuality, all the evidence sifts down to very little real proof. One cannot be sure Eulenberg ever committed the acts which he specifically denied. His position in German politics invited such charges, true or not. He was of an artistic temperament, and for many in Prussia, that was proof enough. He was devoted to the company of men, but Prussian society made this common. His denial, if false, was surely motivated by the desire to save his family, to which he was sincerely devoted. (Bulow claimed that a decade before his own fall, Eulenberg was so horrified at the homosexual charges made about his brother, Fritz, during divorce proceedings, that he broke off with his brother.)

He was also labelled a spiritualist and Christian Scientist (hardly the same thing) who put such nonsense in the Emperor's ear. Spiritualism was then in tremendous vogue in Europe and America and Eulenberg did have some interest in such matters, though he scrupulously avoided trying to interest the Kaiser. Some joking on the subject passed between them.

Except for charges in Bulow's MEMOIRS (where the case is stacked heavily against Eulenberg) there is scant ground for the charge that Eulenberg helped unseat either Bismarck or Holstein.

That he frequently influenced the Kaiser (often at the instigation of those who later attacked him for it) is obvious. Many groups around Wilhelm attempted that, and on the whole, the Militarists were more successful. But Philip's influence was more desirable than most moderating and within the bounds of propriety. He was not, unfortunately, a democrat none of those ever got near the Kaiser but he had less of absolutism or "Byzantinism" about him than other advisers. The charge about a "Liebenberg Round Table" was nonsense, particularly five years after his illness and retirement. The charges all reflect the bitterness of Holstein, speaking through Harden,

Some later writers unfairly saddle Eulenberg with blame for Germany's march to war, but this guilt belongs more to Holstein, Bulow and Harden, even more than to the Kaiser. In a few years, Harden was to boast of the war just begun:

"Not against our will as a nation taken by surprise did we hurl ourselves into this gigantic venture. We willed it. We had to will it. We do not stand before the judgment seat of Europe. We acknowledge no such jurisdiction. Our might shall create a new law in Europe. It is Germany that strikes! When she has conquered new domains for her genius then the priesthoods of all the gods will praise the God of War."