NOTED U.S. SENATOR

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 88, 5 July 1927, Page 9

NOTED U.S. SENATOR

INTERVIEWED THE KAISER The death occurred recently at his home in Indiana of ex-Senator Albert J. Beveridge, the American economist and writer. He was born in 1862 in Ohio, and led a life of privations up to the age of 25, when he was admitted to the Bar. He had then been in turn ploughboy, railwayman, logger and teamster. At 15 he had saved sufficient to pay for a high school education. He became well known as an orator and Republican campaign speaker, and in 1899 was elected U.S. Senator for Indiana. He represented the State until 1911. During the war ex-Senator Beveridge visited the German trenches, and had dramatic interviews with the Kaiser, Hindenburg, and Admiral von Tirpitz. With them he held converse on the dangerous subject of who was responsible for the war. He gave a somewhat flattering portrait of Wilhelm II.: “There is nothing pompous or pretentious in his bearing. One’s first impression is that of a great man who is also a pleasant, simple-mannered gentleman, with an agreeable personality charged with magnetism.”

Both Admiral von Tirpitz and Hindenburg, it is not difficult to guess, had no hesitation in pointing to England as the true villain of the piece.