CROWN PRINCE'S LETTERS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 110, 11 May 1910, Page 11

CROWN PRINCE'S LETTERS.

m> ■ - ! REMARKABLE NEW YORK StJIT. NEW PICTURE OF THE KAISER. {From Onr Own Correspondent.) LONDON, Ist April. I Some remarkable letters signed j "Caesar/ 1 from ?ho German Crown Prince came to light at the recent trial before the Supreme Court at New York of Mr N. E. Barnes, a mining promoter, who is accused of stealing £bOOO, collected from many -of the most eminent members of the Prussian nobility. The trial is a sequel to the strange romance of Count Ha«s Ferdinand yon Hochberg, former aide-de-camp and school friend of the Crown Prince, who resigned his commission in the Prussian Guards in order that he might emigrate to America and marry his sweetheart, a pretty Berlin shop-assistant. After a variety of adventures, Count Hochberg became associated with Barnes, whose name he adopted, and on whose behalf he travelled in Germany, where he induced his noble friends to invest some £36,000 in the Cottonwood Creek Copper Company. It is alleged that Barnes, stories of whose extraordinary generosity to Count Hockberg .obtained wide publicity, appropriated some '£6000 of this money for his own purposes. The chief witness for the prosecution is young Count Hochberg, who, the defence alleges, sold his private correspondence with the Crown Prince to Barnes for "one dollar and other valuable considerations." "LOVE MORE THAN A TITLE." Count Hochberg _himself states that he lent the royal letters and had been unable to get them back. In one letter the Crown Prince said : "Can you not see that be uses you simply as an advertisement for himself ? Poor Mucki ! I Pleage write me something about your home. Here it is all the same. I am j confined to a room with my annual cold. Baby is developing in a splendid way. I enjoy my squadron very much. It is much nicer than a company, although the corporals of the First Regiment of the Guards are better. I am occupied now with speeches. The other day I spent two hours with Buelow. Papa, too, now is alway very kind to me. We have ■ approached one another a good deal. Some days ago he talked to me for a long time, about politics. lam so thankful for it. You know it is like being a^jailor who is never allowed to 'Conduef^-a" ship, but who may at any time be' called upon to replace the statesman. Now, good-bye, 'old chap. Continue to be German. Do not become such an old Yankeo business man. — Yours, Caesar." "Caesar" told the Count that he -had vainly importuned the Hochberg family to receive his wife, and proceeded to impress on Him tho necessity of changing his name. The Count's reply was a glorification of tho joy of being a "man of the people" and a condemnation of the ai-istocratic ideas which his father had acquired "through his association with the Emperor." "My child," he added, "could not respect me if I sold my name and birthright for greed of gold." To his father the Count wrote : "It is not money I want. The blood of the noble Hochberg family rises in my veins and resents the insult of an interference by an attorney who is paid for trying to take all you have left me — my name." CROWN PRINCE'S MANLY PART. There is no doubt concerning the authenticity of the letters, throughout •which the Crown Prince plays the part of a sincere and affectionate friend. When it became known that the young count, whose father sent him to America in the hope that he would forget his shopgirl sweetheart, had married her, ! the Crown Prince wrote : "Potsdam, 9th Dec, 1906. "Dear Mucki, — I must speak to you very seriously to-day. I went tho other day to Rohnstock My mission, as you muy believe, was an unpleasant one in the circumstances. Your father showed me a document written in your own hand, in which you gave your word of honour to abandon your noble name the moment you married the lady of your choice. Mucki, I think there can be no retreat from this. You must abandon your name. If the affair becomes known, as it certainly will, you will be assuredly impossible and lost to us all. Therefore, do what you promised. Listen to your old friend." On a postcard sent irom the shooting lodge of Kleinellsguth, Silesia, the Crown Prince writes: "Come back toon. It's too etupid of you." From Pot&dam, on 11th January. 1907, in another letter, signed "Caesar," the Crown Prince says : "You know how sorry I am for the whole affair. I for long had the hope that you would forget it, but yoiu- motives are irreproachable, and do you all honour. And yet you ought not to have done it. You have now ..burned pretty nearly all the bridges behind you, but you know we, Achim HelldorS and I, will always remain the same to you, come what may. But this matter of your word of honour you must unconditionally put in order. I am soon to begin work in the Government. That is very agreeable to me. This year I have shot nineteen stags, thirty-eight bucks, and three chamois. A thousand greeting.* ! Au revoir ! Thy Caesar. ' ' In one of his replies Count Hochbsrg attempts at great length to set his "Dear Caesar" right regarding the point of honour. Ho states that he promised to change his name on condition that his father gave him enough to live on respectably 'in New York, and did not oppose his marriage. "Instead, father left me to starve. I war without a single dollar, and literally had to support myhelf with manual labour."

You may talk of your horde and yout flocks, You may talk of your Government stocks. Laxo-Tcnic's my wealth, For it brings me good health, Tenpenee half-penny will buy you a box. Laxo-Tonic Pills. 10£ d and Is 6d. Obtainable everywhere. — Advt. You can savii yourself all the danger of coughs and colds this winter by keeping a bottle of Baxter's Lung Preserver by you to take at the first sign of a chill. This remedy quickly expels the cold from the syatem, and strengthens the tissues of tho throat and che3t. Be wise i it's worth Is a drop. The Is lOd bottle is tho most economical.— Advt.