Alan Palmer for Pimlico A reprint of Palmer's readable text of the Seventies. I have always enjoyed Palmer's work which is in the old style of narrative history that points a moral and adorns a tale. In the case of Kaiser Wilhelm II the other purpose of history - to teach us about Tyche (the vicissitudes of fortune) - also comes to the fore. It seems to me that Palmer likes his subjects and at the very least sees things as they saw them while still pointing out their failings. He avoids the stridency of the crypto-historian (who write for wargaming magazines). Yet at many stages the Kaiser could have prevented the Great War and did not, a little more criticism might be order I think. Why (after all) do German governments seem unable to honour treaties? For a people who love order more than liberty I find this remarkable. However, the complete tragedy of the whole thing is all the more powerful for being in the background for so long, the Kaiser having reigned for many years before 1914 hove too. One wants to cry out (in the words of First Quarter-Master General Frank Doberman) "Oy, Hohenzollern, no.....!" More Book Corner: Hot Blood & Cold Steel The Rules of the Game Philip II Importing the European Army War and Society in early Modern Europe 1495-1715 First Punic War Warfare in the Latin East 1192-1291 Spanish Naval Power 1589 to 1665 The Anatomy of Glory The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading The Kaiser Time to Kill First World War The Military Revolution Debate Pallas Armata titles Back to Perfidious Albion #95 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1997 by Charles and Teresa Vasey. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com