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New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9024, 10 April 1888, Page 4

Time was when the matrimonial alliances of princely houses were regarded as the bonds of international amity ; and such alliances were sought for, or feared, as being fraught with national safety or ruin. Since then a newpower has arisen in nearly every civilised nation, and popular sentiment, and sympathy, and aspirations have become more potential for peace or war than dynastic arrangements. The sensation which has been created by the proposed betrothal of the daughter of the Emperor of Germany with the deposed and kidnapped ex-Prince of Bulgaria, would go to show that all faith in the potency of such domestic arrangements of royal or imperial families has not wholly disappeared ; and if we are to believe what appears on the surface it is playing no unimportant role at the present hour at Berlin. Our gracious Queen, God bless her! has a womanly weakness for match-making ; and the new Emperor of Germany being a model son-in-law, as he is a model husband, is apparently considerably under domestic influence ; so that when Her Majesty has expressed a strong desire for regulating les affaires du cceur of her granddaughter, and with a motherly affection for the House of Battenbergwhich appears to be all the warmer because of the bar sinister on its escutcheon causing umbrage to others— chosen Prince Alexander as the husband elect, the Emperor appears to have set dynastic, and diplomatic, and international considerations on one side, and good-naturedly consented co do • what is almost enough to make the old Kaiser deceased to turn in his grave. That our good Queen, with her womanly ways, and in exercise of the domestic influence which she has recently acquired at the Court of Berlin may not be the means of embroiling Europe, must be the prayer of every true Englishman; but the omens are distinctly unfavourable. That the Man of Blood and Iron, the hero of a hundred diplomatic fights, should not sympathise with this ascendancy of the domestic affections, is not more than we might expect; but we venture to think that this question of the betrothal of the Princess is only one of the outward and visible symptoms of that change in the position of Prince Bismarck which was universally expected, and even spoken of freely, as a contingency to the death of the Emperor William. No one ever seemed to have doubted that on the coming of the Crown Prince to the throne, the star of Prince Bismarck's ascendancy would wane. It is only happening as was so frequently predicted, and whether Prince Bismarck retires on this question or on any other, seems to not be of any particular importance. Certainly this proposed betrothal is awkward and embarrassing in many ways: and probably it would' be better for Germany and for Europe if it was not made the occasion for the retirement from public life of the man, on whose breath the peace and war of the world has been so long dependent. But betrothal or no betrothal, all the same, the ascendancy of Prince Bismarck over the Imperial counsels has passed away with the passing of the Crown to the head of the Emperor Frederick, and either failing health or something else will soon be found for covering the retreat of the man who, till so recently, dominated Europe.