SECRETS OF WINDSOR

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 89, 9 January 1926, Page 16

SECRETS OF WINDSOR

HIDDEN DIARY OF CROWN PRINCE FREDERICK “1870” REVELATIONS “With permisiou of .Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India, 1 have to-day given into Dr. Muther’s (sccretay to the Queen) keeping three wooden boxes, bound with iron, which are my personal propertv. The said boxes were deposited in my presence in a secret firc-

proof safe under the State staircase at .Windsor Castle.” That is the account of a strange incident written by the German Crown Prince, afterwards the Emperor Frederick, in July, 1887. The boxes which he hid contained his 1 private papers. “Unhappily, "he could , not deposit them in Berlin with security,” wrote the Empress Frederick after her. husband’s death, “and, as he thought that he would possibly be ordered abroad in the coming winter, he held that his papers would be better hidden at mamma s than at our home in Berlin.” Part of theSe papers, the diary kept by the Prince during the war with France in 1870-71, have just been published in Germany, at;d to read them is to understand the Prince’s reason for hiding them. He did not want them to fall into the hands of the “Iron Chancellor,” whom he condemns. The boxes were brought back to Germany after the Emperor’s death in 1888, and, with the permission of the Empress, most of the papers were placed in the Hohcnzollcrn archives. One packet of papers contained the amplified war diary, and on it was written an order that it should not be opened for 50 years. This period expir cd. three years ago, and the diary, edited by Dr.’ Meisner, is now given to the world. . . In reading these memoirs it is dimcult to bear in mind that the war which is described broke out 55 years ago. Frederick might, it would seem, be describing as war SCO years ago, so different was it from the war which this generation has seen. He describes the fearful hour of leaving wife and children for the war, and goes on to tell of a round of pleasant visits to the South German States, whose soldiers he was to command. At last the Prince found himself at his headquarters, and heard the sound of cannon. War was waged politely in those davs. On August 6, 1870, the Prince records that he met a French officer who had been taken prisoner. “Nous avons tout perdu!” cried the Frenchman. The Prince tried to comfort him: “Vous n’avez pas perdu i’honneur,” he said. The most striking passages ;of the diarv arc those in’which Frederick condemns Bismarck. He sees that the sympathy of Europe, which at first had been’ with Germany, is now with France, and he blames the “Iron Chancellor.”

In words which a prophet might have used, he shows his love of old Germany and his fear of the new: “lii the nation of thinkers and philosophers, of poets and artists, of idealists and enthusiasts, people sec no more than a race of conquerors and destroyers to whom no pledge and no treaty is holy. “We arc certainly, without contradiction, the foremost civilised race of the world; but at present it appears that we are neither loved nor respected, but only feared. ... So far has the theory of blood and iron invented by Bismarck brought us. “What use to us is might, warlike fame and glory, hate and mistrust dog ns everywhere, if every step which wc take in our progress forwards is regarded with suspicion ? “Bismarck has made us great and mighty, but he has robbed us of our friends, of the svmpathv of the’ world, and of our good conscience.”