THE DRAMA OF 365 DAYS
plunged Europe into the conflict that has since shaken it to its foundations, he flung down his pen and cried, "You'll live to regret this, gentlemen."
PEN-PORTRAIT OF THE CROWN PRINCE
And then the Crown Prince. In August of
last year nine out of every ten of us would have
said that not the father, but the son, of the
Royal family of Germany had been the chief
provocative cause of the war. Subsequent events
have lessened the weight of that opinion. But
the young man's known popularity among an
active section of the officers of the army; their
subterranean schemes to set him off against his
father; a vague suspicion of the Kaiser's jealousy
of his eldest son—all these facts and shadows of
facts give colour to the impression that not least
among the forces which led the Emperor on that
fateful first of August to declare war against
Russia was the presence and the importunity of
the Crown Prince. What kind of man was it,
then, whom the invisible powers of evil were
employing to precipitate this insensate struggle?
Hundreds of persons in England, France,
Russia, and Italy must have met the Crown
Prince of Germany at more or less close quarters,
and formed their own estimates of his
