KAISER AND PRINCE ERNEST

Northern Advocate, 7 October 1913, Page 5

KAISER AND PRINCE ERNEST

GUELPH-HOHENZOLLERN CONTROVERSY.

STORM BREWING ABOUT

KAISER'S EARS,

(By Telegranh-Press Assn.-Copyright)

BERLIN, Oct. 6

The Kaiser has returned from his five weeks' holiday to Potsdam, and has taken personal charge of the Guelph situation

He has sent Count yon Hollweg (Imperial German Chancellor) to Munich to confer with the Regent of Bavaria, whose mediation with the Duke of Cumberland is sought. Meanwhile there :s no announcement of the Prussian Government's policy.

Public opinion will unalterably oppose a Guelph assuming the rule of Brunswick until he explicitly renounces Hanover.

The Nationalist press threatens the Kaiser with a storm which will reduce that of November, 1908, to the dimensions of a summer zephyr.

A semi-official communique describes Prince Ernest's attitude as exemplary and utterly opposed to the Guelph machination, and states that the Prince is coming to Potsdam this week.

The "Daily Mail's" Berlin correspondent states that the PrussianCourt is less anxious to act hastily because through the recent disappointment by the Kaiser's daughter the question of succession is less acute than i" would otherwise have been.

.The dispute between the Duke of Cumberland and the Kaiser over the Hanoverian succession is one of longstanding. From 1714 to 1837 the King of England was also Elector, or (after 1814) King of Hanover. But when Queen Victoria ascended the throne the Salic law, which forbids a woman to reign in most of the German States, intervened, and the title of King of Hanover passed to her uncle Ernest, Dtike of Cumberland. But in 1866, when Prussia and Austria were at war, George, the Duke of Cumberland's son, took sides against Prussia. The Hanoverians, like the Austrians, were badly beaten, and Prussia annexed the whole kingdom. The deposed George issued a vehement protest to the Powers, and when he died in 1878, his successor, the present Duke' Ernest August, maintained the hereditary feud with Prussia. In ISB4 the position was further complicated by the fact that Duke Ernest, through the extinction of the reigning house of Brunswick, became heir to that dukedom as well. But the Imperial Government' could hardly allow Duke Ernest to become Duke of Brunswick while he persistently defied its authority in regard to Hanover. At ' the Kaiser's instance, Prince Albert of Prussia was therefore appointed Regent of Brunswick, and this step still further embittered the relations between the Guelphs, whom Duke Ernest 'represents, and the Hohenzollerns,