ROYALIST DIE-HARDS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 88, 15 April 1933, Page 8 (Supplement)

ROYALIST DIE-HARDS.

GERMANY'S MANY PRINCELINGS.

POLITICAL WEATHER WATCHERS.

RESTORATION" PROSPECTS,

Although the people oppose a return to monarchy, recent events have given new hope to royalist diehards. Two days before the signing of the armistice in Marshal Foch's private railway car in the forest of Compiegne ended the World War, that is, on November 9, 1918, the republic was proclaimed throughout Germany, and 19 minor crowns and coronets, in addition to the German imperial crown, rolled together downhill. Nine months lat,ir there was promulgated the Weimar Constitution, definitely providing against the return of either crowns or sovereigns •to any part of Germany. So the crowns still lie there, writes a correspondent to the New York "Times." Around these formal emblems of the Germany that used to be there hovers a rapidly dwindling throng of minor royalties and their devotees, each with ■watchful gaze upon the political weather. Their hope is that to-day or tomorrow, or at some time in the near future, the auguries will be favourable to carrying up again the particular diadem to which each is devoted, and there installing it and some favoured wearer in the empty niche _ n ® ar the hill-top which was sacred to it in the days that are gone. Fourteen years have passed jiow since the cataclysm, and never yet have conditions promised success. hope dies hard, political weather is changeable, and who knows, in Germany. what next week may portend? Of late there has teen a noticeable increase of activity at the foot of the hill, prompted, no doubt, by certain happenings higher up. A suggestion that to the various German States there should be granted "constitutional autonomy" was particularly "welcome. To grant it would mean the amendment of Article XVII. of the Weimar Constitution, which now provides that every German State must be a "free State" —in other -words, have a republican Constitution. Amendment of this article might enable, for instance, Bavaria or Wurtemberg, or even Prussia, while remaining an integral part of Germany, to alter its constitutional framework so as to substitute monarchy for the present republican form of State government. Thus former Crown Prince Rupprecht might be elected Premier of Bavaria, the Premiership might be developed into_ a regency, other States might follow suit, and all would be in order for the little processions carrying those supposedly abandoned crowns to start up the hill again. Then presently Germany would be again the old imperial Germany, with a more or less divinely inspired Kaiser on the hill-top throne, and all the little niches below filled by a majesty, a. grand duke or a prince, each with his little court, who would tell, the State Parliaments what to do, and in time might get even the Reichstag itself into a proper state of obedience.

A weird organisation, calling itseif the "League of the Upright," otherwise the "battle ring of the monarchic movement in Germany," and devoted wholly to the Hohenzollerns, took occasion to emerge from obscurity and raise its own battle cry for restoration of everything— personal right by God's grace* Kaieer and Reich and all the rest of it. And the Socialists have now given out the watchword, "Republicans, defend the republic!" Any serious attempt to restore monarchy in Germany, particularly a Hohenzollern monarchy, will have a real fight on its hands. There would be such a lot of it to restore. In the 19 crowns that rolled down the hill with the Hohenzollern imperial circlet were those of four Kingdoms, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and Wurtemberg; six grand duchies, Baden, Hesse, the two Mecklenburgs, SaxeWeimar and Oldenburg; five duchies, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Brunswick, Anhalt, Saxe- Altenburg and Saxe-Meiningen, and four principalities, Reuss, Schaum-burg-Lippe, Lippe-Detmold and Schwaiz-burg-Rudolstadt. In all of them there are persons, in greater or lesser number, who would welcome a monarchial restoration, because it would be to their advantage. And in every one of them there is a body of Germans—in most caees a majority—who want nothing of the kind. They have done with monarchy, and wish never to return to it until every other form of government has been tried and failed. There is doubt that Germany, as a whole, clcaves to the republic. Half the reigning houses which filled the 19 little thrones under the old federated empire have collapsed. In Saxony and Wurtemburg the heads ot the regimes are dead and their kin are scattered. In most of the others tlie story is the same. Only the ex-Crown Prince of Prussia and the ex-Crown Prince of Bavaria remain to claim the larger inheritance —if there is. As to the intrinsic popularity of each in his own territory,' there is no comparison. • ; ■ ' ' Friedrich Wilhelm o£ Prussia. retains his hold on a certain class, but it is a highly restricted class —the former nobles who would cleave to any personality with a claim to the name of Hohenzollern; the sporting fraternity with which the ex-Prince is akin in sympathy; minor "society" of a certain calibre. There it ends. In the great mass of the people neither his name nor his personality evokes any great response.

Rnpprecht of Bavaria is different He is an elderly man.now, make* no pretence at royal state, and moves about among his former subjects, a democratic, kindly eoul for whom no social function is too modest to please by his presence, so that his name is still one to conjure with in Bavaria. It is doubtful that he even desires to mount a throne. It could give him nothing more in loyalty and affection than he now has. Certainly there has been not the faintest sign of his intriguing for a return to the old order. 'Yet, on the other hand, it would take more than mere persuasion to induce the normally easygoing Bavarians to consent again to place a Hohenzollern above a Wittelsbach. North and Sonth. If, in a choice between the two, personality alone were to count, there would be no doubt as to the result. But then it may' be remembered that no Bavarian king was among the German princelings at Versailles to join in. the cheers; when the victorious Bismarck proclaimed the first Wilhelm German Kaiser. Why, then, if monarchy should come, would not Prussia accept an imperial Wittelsbach? That raises a deeper question. It would be difficult for anyone who knows Germany to imagine the Protestant-north accepting a Catholic ruler. Religious prejudices aj-e too old and too deep-seated .for that. The bitterness of the Thirty Years War is unforgottcn still even in this modern Qcrmany. But in Munich, where the mad kin;' Ludwig and his mad brother, last of tile direct male line of Wittelsbach in their day, occupy the place of honour among the dead Wittelsbachs in the crypt sacred to their race, and country and city folk alike join in frequent pilgrimages to honour their resting-place, a different sentiment prevails. If North Germany should be induced to move toward the Hohenzollerns, South Germany with one accord would turn southward. There is always Austria and a possible Danubian Federation in prospect. . . And there would still be left States liko Wurttenberg, Baden,, and thayb.' Saxony, which have , had enough of monarchy of any kind .. and would go their way. faithful to this new democracy which, if not wholly efficient, does nevertheless mean freedom, a choice in government and the, right to select the path along which the State shall move.