BLOOD AND IRON

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2346, 16 January 1926, Page 2

BLOOD AND IRON

EMPEROR FREDERICK'S WAR DIARY. UNDER STAIRCASE AT WINDSOR. ‘‘With permission of Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India, I have to-day given into Dr. Mother's (Secretary to the Queen) keeping three wooden boxes, bound with iron, which are my personal property. The said boxes were deposited in my presence in a secret fireproof safe under the State staircase at Windsor Castle. That is the account of a strange Incident written by the Gorman Crown Prince, afterwards the Emperor Frederick, in July, 1887. The boxes which he hid contained his private papers. "Unhappily he could not deposit them In Berlin with security," wrote the Empress Frederick after her husband’s death, "and ua he thought that ho would possibly he 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 Xi’rance in 1870-71.. have just been published in Germany, and 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 ISSB, and with the permission of the Empress, most of the papers were placed in the Hohenzollern archives. One packet of papers contained the amplified war diary, and on it was ■written an order that it should not be opened for fifty years. This period expired three years ago, and the diary edited by Dr Maisnex, is now given to the world. In reading these memoirs it is difficult to bear in mind that the war which is described broke, out fiftyfive years ago. Frederick might, it would seem, be describing a war 500 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 hoard the sound of cannon, ‘War was waged politely in those days. 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’honnour,” he said.

The most striking passages of the diary are 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. “In the nation of thinkers and philosophers, of poets and artists of idealists and enthusiasts people see no more than a race of conquerors and destroyers tp whom no pledge and no treaty is holy. “We are certainly., without contradiction. the foremost civilised race of the world; but at presnt it appars that we are neither loved nor respected. but onlv feaxoA - - « So far has

the theory of blood and lron invented by Bismarck brought 1 us. "What use to us ls~mlght. warlike fame and glory.? Hare and mistrust dog us everywhere, If every step which we take in our progress forwards is regarded with suspicion. 7 ‘Bismarck has made ua great and mighty, but he has robbed us of our friends ,of the sympathy of the world and of our good conscience.”