Before an hour had passed, they were threatening to raise me to my third orgasm. I begged them to stop. They did so only on the condition that I would give them an extra tip. I capitulated at once. The extreme tension of the past hour had really been almost unsupportable. My friend laughed when I met him in the vestibule. He said that he underwent the “crucifixion” regularly, once a month!
Of course I had many other experiences in Egypt. I had the incredible experience of seeing a Nubian woman thrust a liter milk bottle into her vagina and make it disappear completely. Naturally, having seen her thus do injury to herself, I had no desire whatsoever to fuck her.
Another time, a belly-dancer was prevailed upon to dance naked on the table of a dive in Cairo. Having completed her superbly sexual dance, she was set upon by all the males present and had to submit until all the lust in the room had been quenched. She took one immense cock in her cunt, one in her mouth, one in her bottomhole, and grasped one in each of her hands. Before or since I have never seen such a shower of sperm. I was the only man present who refrained from having intercourse with her, not that I did not enter into the spirit of the thing, but simply because I did not think it wise to take the risk of contracting a venereal disease.
I mention these experiences, not because all my experiences in the Arab countries were so crude, but simply because the Arab female in general is not unlike our European woman, especially the Spanish who have almost the same complexion, the same dark hair, and a similar temperament.
Though they sometimes like to consider themselves Europeans, North Africans belong to a geography that is essentially part of the Middle East, and that term has not only a geographical but also a cultural and political reference. Taken as a whole, the Middle East has for the past epoch at least been a sphere of political ferment. As such, it lies there as a pearl to be annexed by whatever European power has the appropriate ambition and politico-military power. As such, it has provoked international jealousies which in large part contributed towards the Great War. I cannot attempt a detailed analysis of the causes of that war. I shall content myself now with the consideration of a few of its aspects.
CHAPTER VIII
The talk of all the first years of the new century was the change in feeling between England and Germany. The feeling in England towards Germany grew steadily worse ever since the Kaiser's letter backing up Kruger in 1896. Every brag by the German Emperor about the growth of the German fleet intensified the bitterness in England.
Curiously enough, almost all the chief London journalists worked persistently to increase the bad feeling. Colonel Maxse and his friends in the National Review let no opportunity pass unused and Mr. Strachey and his staff in The Spectator were just as venomous. Sir Rowland Blennerhasset, too, in The Fortnightly; Dr. Billon in The Contemporary and Mr. Arnold White as a free lance did all they could to fan the flame of hatred.
In June 1913, the Kaiser celebrated the 25th anniversary of his ascension to the throne. The assemblage of kings and princes and all the notables of Germany gave a truly imperial color to the proceedings. The military pageant was very impressive. The unparalleled expansion of German commerce and manufacture owed something to his encouragement. In not a few departments, German science had achieved superiority over the rest of the world. The population had increased from 42 to 66 million. The birthrate, though decreasing, averaged 31 per 1,000 against 26 in England and 10 in France. Agriculture had prospered greatly and supplied Germany with 95 per cent of her necessary food, though prices had risen considerably. The German railways totaled 60,000 kilometers, 230,000 ships passed in and out of her harbors annually, and the commerce of Hamburg was exceeded only by that of London. In the production of sugar, Germany stood first with two million tons yearly, and potash was almost exclusively a German possession. More important still, in the production of iron, Germany was second only to the United States, in that of coal she took the third place after the United States and England. It was stated in the Reichstag that if the recent growth of trade could be maintained, Germany in this respect would surpass England in ten years and occupy the first place.
From the dismissal of Bismarck in 1890 till the World War in 1914, the chief figure in Europe was Kaiser Wilhelm the Second. When I met him, along with Edward, Prince of Wales, I was astonished by his rude authoritativeness.
Whoever wants to understand and to realize all the tragedy of the World War has only to read the book of Emil Ludwig entitled Kaiser Wilhelm II. It is not a great biography, but it is a most damning indictment. Ludwig shows that the Emperor really thought he could make himself the protector of Kruger and the Transvaal even at the cost of a war with England. He did not see that he could not have landed a single German soldier in the Transvaal against the will of the English. When he began building his battle fleet, avowedly to match the English, he did not see that the English would be forced to keep the upper hand in sea power. And if England left anything to chance, they would certainly be supported in the last resort by the enormous power and wealth of the United States.
For years he built upon the support of Russia and the personal friendship of the Tsar “Nicky,” though Bulow convinced him that Russia had entered into a close alliance with France.
In all history we have no record of so brainless a ruler. And yet Kaiser Wilhelm had a certain mental intelligence and charm of conversation. He was by nature an actor greedy of popular applause. I think of the charming letter he wrote to his grandmother, Queen Victoria, when he was forty years of age:
“How incredible it must seem to you that the tiny weeny little rat you so often had in your arms, and dear Grandpapa swung about in his napkin, has now reached the forties, just the half of your prosperous successful life. It is to be hoped you are not displeased with your impetuous colleague.”
And then think of his defiance:
“When Metternich frankly declared in July 1908 that the English Ministers were all for peace and only wanted a reciprocal diminution in the Navy Estimates, the Emperor was infuriated and wrote in the margin: 'A veiled threat! We will suffer no dictation! Ambassador has exceeded his instructions!' Further: 'It must be made clear to him that an arrangement with England at the expense of the fleet is no desire of mine. It is a piece of boundless impudence, a mortal insult to the German people and their Emperor; it must be imperatively and finally discountenanced. The Law will be carried out to the last fraction; whether Britain likes it or not is nothing to us. If they want war, let them begin itwe are not afraid! I must beg that the Ambassador will henceforth take no notice whatever of this kind of vaporing!'
Those who have read this book of Ludwig on the Kaiser will have to admit that Wilhelm was the chief cause of the war.
One curious fact should be recorded here. Ludwig traces Wilhelm's growth in conceit in a marvelous way. Very early on, Ballin wrote about Bulow: “Bulow is utterly ruining the Emperor; with his perpetual adulation, he is making him overestimate himself beyond all reason.”
The tide of flattery mounted steadily: In 1912, Lamprecht, Germany's leading historian, wrote of the Kaiser: “His is a personality of primitive potency, of irresistible authority, for which the whole domain of emotion and experience is perpetually opened anew, as for the soul of a creative artist. Self-reliance, fixity of purpose, ever directed to the loftiest aimsthose are the distinguishing marks of the Imperial personality.”
The Kaiser sucked it all in as Gospel. He wrote: “My subjects should always do what I tell them, but they will think for themselves and that's what makes all the trouble.”