NAME AND HONOUR.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 118, 21 May 1910, Page 13

NAME AND HONOUR.

A GERMAN" ROMANCE. Some remarkable letters signed "Caesar," from tho German Crown Prince, formed a curious feature at the trial before the Supreme Court at New York of Mt. Noah E. Barnes, a mining promoter, who is accused of stealing £6000 collected from many of the most eminent members of the Prussian nobility. Tho trial, stated the Daily Mail's correspondent on 31st March, is a sequel to the strange romance- of Court Hans Ferdinand yon Hochberg, former aide-de-camp aud 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 shopassistant. After a variety of adven-. tures 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 estraorinary generosity to Count Hochberg obtained wide publicity, appropriated some £6000 of this money for his own purposes. The chief witness for the prosecution is young Count Hochberg, vrao, the defence alleges, sold his private correspondence with the Crown Prince, to Barnes for "one dollar and other' valuable considerations." Count Hochberg himself states that he lent the royal letters and had been unable to get them returned. The Crown Prince's first letter ran: — "Potsdam, 11th Jan., 1907. "Dear Mucki, —Many thanks for your last letter, from which I learn something in detail of your present life. From what you write everything seems all right, and you caa believe that your parents have not influenced me. But nevertheless you cannot escape from your written promise, made upon your "honour. If I had written as you did, that 'in case of marriage below my station I shall change my noble name,' then I should change my name anyhow." Count Hochberg had testified that he did change his name to "Hans Ferdinand Barnes" after ho had been exiled by his family for marrying. He said he should I resume his noble nams because his father 1 failed to keep a ■ pecuniary agreement with him. The Crown Prince's letter continued: —■ "Believe me, dear Mucki? that personally it would be quite indifferent to me whether you have this or another name. You will yet be my good old friend, to whom I shall always stick. But with your new homo and new friends you cannot at once adopt new ideas about honour. Are reservations of mind not impossible for a. gentleman? And, then, thi& dictated letter of Barnes to your parents! Excuse me if I find it peculiar. We all look upon it as silly and bombastic." "LOVE MORE THAN A TITLE." Ths letter to which the Crown Prince refened was one from Count Hochberg written at the dictation of Barnes, containing observations on the futility of title*, and saying that "love was worth more than a title." The Crown Prince proceeded: — "Can you not see that he uses you simply as an advertisement for himself? Poor Mucki! Please writ© me something about your home. Hcie it is all the same. lam confined to a room with my annual cold. C«cilie too. 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 ot tho Guards are belter. lam occupied now with speeches. The other day I spent two hours with Buelow. "Papa, too, now is always 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 sailor who is never allowed to conduct a ship, but who may at any time be called upon to replace the steersman. Now good-bye, old chap. Continue to be German. Do not become such an old Yankee business man. —Your Caesar." A further b^vtch of letters from "Caesar" was read dealing mainly with the count's difficulties with his noble parents. The Ciown Prince assured the count that he was his dearest friend, and added, "Your father still loves you very much, but your mother, I am sorry to say, has completely given you up." "Caesar" told the count that he had vainly importuned the Hochberg family to receive his wife, and proceeded to impress on him the necessity of changing his name The count's reply was a glorification of the joy of being a "man of the people" and a condemnation of the aristocratic ideas which his father had acquired "through his association with the Emperor." "Jtfy "child," he added, "could not respect mo if I sold my name and birthTight 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." Finally the count wrote to "CaesaT" requesting him, if any patrimony should be legally left him (the count), to name some charity to which it might be given.