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In Hugh Kingsmill's "Frank Harris" (1932) he describes how in the 1890s, in the Saturday Review, Harris wrote a series of attacks on the German regime and Wilhelm in particular, and then goes on to say that Wilhelm mentioned these "in his book on the causes of the war". I have been unable to identify what book Kingsmill meant, and thus locate the quote about Harris. (Part of the problem being, I think, that the automated scanning software used by online book repositories generally cannot cope with old German blackletter type).

I checked Wilhelm's memoirs and can find no mention of either Harris or the Saturday Review. I have performed searches on Google Books and the Internet Archive, all to no avail. I wonder if the book in question may have been written by someone else than Wilhelm, but I don't know the possible sources at all well, and my German is minimal, so I am now stuck.

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    A couple of possibilities from the DNB: Das Friedensangebot Deutschlands (Berlin : R. Hobbing, 1916) and Comparative History 1878-1914 (London: Hutchinson, 1922 Transl. by F. Appleby Holt).
    – Tomas By
    Commented Sep 9, 2020 at 11:15
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    Thanks @TomasBy. Commented Sep 9, 2020 at 11:18

1 Answer 1

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While it doesn't mention Harris by name, The Saturday Review is certainly mentioned at least three times in Wilhelm II's Comparative history, 1878-1914* (available to read and/or download from archive.org).


In 1895:

Aug. 24. Article in the Saturday Review inciting to war against Germany

(with a footnote: "Quoted, e.g., by H. F. Helmolt, Ein Vierteljahrhundert Weltgeschichte. 1894-1919, Charlottenburg, 1919, p. 20.")

In 1896:

Feb. 1. Article in the Saturday Review:

** Germaniam esse delendam."

And in 1897:

Sept. 11. The Saturday Review again demands war against Germany.


* Also available to read &/or download in the original German as Vergleichende Geschichtstabellen von 1878 bis zum Kriegsausbruch 1914 on archive.org.

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    That looks like it. I had searched under Wilhelm but not William. Thanks so much. Commented Sep 9, 2020 at 11:42
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    What is the original for that? His "Ereignisse und Gestalten 1878–1918" is a totally different book? Commented Sep 9, 2020 at 12:27
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    @LаngLаngС this one I think.
    – Tomas By
    Commented Sep 9, 2020 at 12:31
  • That second article seems to be not by Harris, by the way (no way of telling from this source). It was credited to "a biologist". Apparently this was Sir Philip Chambers Mitchell but all the sources for that identification I have found so far are pro-Hitler(!) so hardly to be trusted. Commented Sep 12, 2020 at 16:26

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