THE EX-CROWN PRINCE

Evening Star, Issue 16992, 14 March 1919, Page 5

THE EX-CROWN PRINCE

DESCRIBED BY HIS VALET.

The old adage that “no man la a. hero o his valet “Is strikingly purred in the as© of the ex-Crown Prince of Germany, fhe impressions, of him formed by Fells, otherwise “Fritz,” his former servitor, are conveyed in an interview in the ‘New York Sun ’ with Mr Edgar M. Moore, who styles himself a professional banjoist. Respecting Fritz’s military talent, Air Moore said: “ Why, if anyone had formed a regiment for him m platoons, he could not of his »wn command have done so much as to '■ march it down a perfectly straight street, let alone having altered or turned it if he * found a stone wall at the end! Training ? ■'Nobody could train him. He was rail-' k roaded through Bonn and the military * colleges. Militarist 1 Tin soldier ? I tell ■ vou that he hated a uniform —wouldn’t fcave one on when he could avoid it. What he liked was to lounge in his English tweeds. At first meeting, you would nave taken him—his English is perfect, absolutely clean o! accent—for a phenomenally worthless specimen of a low-class English squire from the countryside. Ho is what Americans used to call an Anglomaniac. He never dreamed of posing as a German warrior of blood and iron; ho preferred to ape the English “ Johnny ”; the " knut,” as they call them in London; the chap who used to hang around the stage door of the Gaiety Theatre* He wouldn t drink beer; said he loathed it. He wouldn’t drink champagne either. When ha was in Berlin you could always find him at night in one or two of the moat expensive night-life cafes, like the Blumenthal. Champagne at 25 marks was the only drink they would serve you with there—-perhaps you could have got cheaper I drinks bv making a row about it. But not so Fritz. He stuck to his whisky pegs, and, of course, they had to please him. He said that beer made people fat, *nd that was why his countrymen had no figures, and that he preferred to keep his. He would never eat very much for fear cf losing Ms slim waist-—you will have noticed what he recently said about that in Holland. Its perfectly true, and characteristic of him, I never knew of him taking “pegs” enough to make him drunk. He had his favorite brand of whisky—an English brand, cf course.” Fritz loved to make fun of Germany and the Germans, and to joke about the stiff-pouter-pigeon stylo of the German officer. His style was what he thought was the specially English grace iu lounging. Mr Moore goes on to say: “After vou’d known him a while you’d have realised that his mind was that of a lather dull boy of 14. No; I don’t mean ‘just mere silliness. I mean tint kind of thinking was as far as he could go, and his ego, his vanity, was exactly that land. 3c was like a bragging kid in the recess ■vard. Don’t the doctors have a spec’al name for such a raako-up?_ I can’t think ot the one I mean. Not a defective exactly, but a kind of degenerate. Anyhow, '■‘degenerate’ surely goes. No; not in the wav vou might he trunking of. Hie • private life ’—that’s a funny name for it when it was spread plain as day all over Europe—wasn't where the degeneracy showed up. I mean that it showed up in general ways; I mean hje—ho wasn’t ‘there’! •‘Felix, the valet, told mo that what Fritz liked to read was Nick Carter in German translations. You could buy ’em. 10 pfennigs a number, at the little notions shops, just the way you could here. And Fritz always had a stack of ’em on hie dressing table. Feli's used to keep his Recounts for him. Keeping that fellow’s accounts was a job for a pretty nimble head, from what Felix said about it. Ho had an income of 50,000d01. “ You don’t suppose that began to suffice him, do you? When it gave out he'd borrow where he could. Banks and money'lenders generally were shy of him—tlicv ‘know him ; but of course the good shops had to give him unlimited credit, so he’d buv expensive jewellery and furs and things on tick and then he’d pawn or sell ’em for readv cash. He needed it. His dogs and horses and girls—he had new ones of each kind every time you saw him —ran into a little fortune for the upkeep every vear. . . . ‘My God!’ was the wav Felix put it. 1 when Fritz sircctwls to the throne Germany will go bankrupt in a year-.’ Ha said Fritz’s creditors, lined _ up four abreast, would have reached to Cnina. And as for i.he Kaiser—ho used to talk Fritz over with the valet very freely—he once screamed out: ‘The boy wants to turn the Royal Opera-house a. cockthat’s yotir commander—Army Group of the German Crown Prince, and bo on—who made the horrible blunders at Yerdtm!’ ivfocre comments grimly. ‘ Somebody made 'em, all right, but it wasn t lie. I'd "like to let that ho never originated a single order. It wouldn’t surprise me if I should hear that he never even was there!’ ” Later Mr Moore and Ms partners were summoned to play in private before the then Crown Prince, who took part in the evening’s performance by playing a guitar. He could play a little sort of vamp, and had a very fair ear, but ns Mr Mooro remarks : “Of course, we kept down to him and covered him on his breaks. .He could plaj, - in the keys of G, D, and F —he couldn’t in B-ilat. That’s the hardest key, vou know. He was always going to learn it, but never did. “‘Well, Ragtime,’ ho says—called me that irom the first—‘how am I making out?’ I said if anything ever went wrong with Hm in the princing business he could have a job with our baud at any time. That tickled him to death. After that, whenever he had us to play anywhere or came across us in one of the cities he’d stand up and grin and toll everybody. ” ' Ragtime says if I’m ever out of luck I can always get a job with the band.’ And then he’d guffaw. “ It wasn’t long before I jjofc to know the valet. His name was Felix Makadoff. 9 Russian, I think ho was. Thev called him the Perfect Valet in Berlin. He sure was a perfect godsend to Fritz—about half his time was spent In covering some of Fritz’s tracks or getting him out of scrapes or raising money for him. Felix was the highest typo of that- class of servant, a blamed sight better gentleman than his master, if I’m a judge. He'd served the Grand Duke Boris and other notabilities, and ho knew the courts of Europe from the backstairs side as plenty of powerful diplomats would have given their stars to know them. Ho spoke four languages perfectly, and bad a first-rato education. “Later—not so very long ago—Fritz quarrelled with Felix in one of his tantrums and turned him off after nearly 20 years of service no other human being could have given, and turned him off not only without a pension, bub without so much as a letter of recommendation. But that’s Fritz all oyer. He didn’t care for his position, ho didn’t care for Ms future resoonsibllities, be didn’t care for Ms father and mother or for his wife, or Ms children or anybody or anything else under heaven —but' himself and his hobbies, principally sports.” According to Felix, the Kaiser used to send for Mm all the time and try to draw him out about Fritz and what he was thinking and planning. Once Felix was shaving the Kaiser on a morning of the day of a big racing meet. The Crown Prince was entered to rida his own horse in a steeplechase over a dangerous course. The horse was a young one and mettlesome, and the Prince’s father and mother were panic-stricken that ho should take such a risk. Mr Moore proceeds : “The Kaiser sent for Fritz while Felix was in the room. ‘Your mother and I ask that you withdraw your entry,’ he said. ‘Do you?’ says Fritz. ‘Well, I can’t, that’s all; my friends know I’m going to ride, and a fine fool I’d look, wouldn’t I?’ ‘I forbid your riding!’ says the Kaiser, getting excited. Fritz didn’t say anytMng—just knocked the ash off his English cigarette like some dimenovel hero. 4 As your Emperor,’ stormed the Kaiser, ‘I command you to withdraw!’ “ Fritz was going oi|t. ‘ Command away !* ha threw out ever his shoulder.' ‘Emperor or no Emperor, I’m going to ride that race if I lose the crown! He did it, too. And the Kaiser—he was tramping up and down the room by that timeri-carac bouncing over to Felix. “ Mein Gott, you see these grey hairs? ’ he screams. ‘ That boy

has been the cause! His doings'are going to bring mo to my grave!’ “Discipline him, did you say? Nobody ever was able to discipline Fritz since ho could walk. Ho may have been sentraway at times to fortresses. I don’t know. If ha was, it made no impression on his mind. No, it wasn’t that ho was si soiled. It was natural; it was in Mm. He'd have his way, he’d do ns ho pleased, or die. “ ‘l’m a throwback,' ho used to say of himself, meaning it m the dogbreeder’s sense. No, I don’t know what ancestral trait ho imagined he threw back to. English characteristics, maybe. That was the way ho explained himself, as far ns ho ever did. “He had several dogs always. I remember an Irish terrier, an English bull, and a couple of others, but none of German breeds. ‘Can’t keep a German dog,’ he’d say. ‘ That Irishman of mine eats ’em up faster than I can got ’em.’ And then he’d laugh. Ho used to make a point of saying such things where the thirty-third degree Germans, especially army men, could hear. “Naturally the army men detested him. Their name for him was ‘ Cockney Fritz ’ —they made no bones of it, either. Of course they’d been brought lip to hate anytMng English. He wouldn't smoko a German-made cigarette, although you could get them as good as any in the world. His were mado for him in Loudon. So wore his clothes and his shoes, and everything else a man of his lasts uses that could be made there. I know. Felix came by any qtmntity of clothes through him, of course. The last time I saw Felix ho told me ho had enough clothes saved up to last him the rest of hia life. “ Yes, sir—Fritz loved England. lie used to slip over there incognito a lot oftener than the public ever knew. He’d take Felix along and they’d sea a big prize-fight, or attend the Henley crow races, or some other sporting event. Then they’d do a show and London by lamplight and come home next day. Fritz used to sav again and again the he’d love to live in England.”