Page:The guilt of William Hohenzollern.djvu/14

10 is made in the present work, and which reveals anything but a breach with the policy of the fallen Government.

While my colleagues and I were awaiting instructions to send the collection to the printers, we occupied ourselves in the completion of the work and in giving it the finishing touches. As, however, the hopes of a speedy permission to go to press became ever more remote, I could not withhold my colleagues from the other urgent duties which were calling them. At the beginning of May they concluded their work on the documents. I knew, however, that I could reckon on their immediate services as soon as we received orders to print.

Yet even after the signing of the Peace Treaty these orders were delayed.

At last, one fine day in the middle of September, I was rung up on the telephone about this matter—not, indeed, by the Foreign Office, but by a newspaper, which wanted to know whether it was true that Herren Mendelssohn, Montgelas and Schücking were to publish my collection, and not myself. I could only reply that I knew less of it than did the inquirer. I only heard of it through the newspapers.

The Government was, in fact, so wanting in good faith as to give to others, without even informing me of the fact, the publication of the collection of documents undertaken by me and carried out under my direction.

To this day the reasons for throwing me overboard have never been clear to me. The Government has never given any.

Their proceedings created so much bad blood that they found themselves compelled to call in. Professor Schücking and Count Montgelas came to me at the end of September with the assurance that what they intended to publish was exclusively my collection, in which not a