NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13723, 13 April 1908, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

KAISER'S SOX IN PARIS,

Wiu, Prince Eitel Fritz's visit to Paris, which he seems to have enjoyed thoroughly, though it was only a flying one, mean lie beginning of a, new era in Franco-Ger-man relations? There is no doubt (says a press correspondent) that the popular mind in the French capital has seized upon the topic and makes much of it. Certainly, there is .something that appeals to the imagination in the thought of a. son of the Kaiser gazing reverently upon Napoleon's tomb and handling the "Petit. Chapeau" and the sword worn at Austerlitz, while two French generals acted as ciceroni to the Prussian Prince. Stock Exchange men were almost excited by the visit, and rumours ran round the Bourse that Prince Eitel l-'ritz had called upon the President of the Republic. This, of course, was only a story. No Prussian Imperial or Royal Prince has ever been to see it President of the French Republic since the war of 1870, nor will for some time to come. It is now said that the prince only left a card at the Palace of the Ely see. His visit to Peris has been the first ever made openly by a son of the House of Holtenzollern since the war. Prince Eitel Fritz was, of course, incognito t'.er-e. but his presence was publicly known. When his father, in 1878, during the lifetime of the old Kaiser Wilhelm, went, as is by now a. certain fact, to visit the first' Universal Exhibition of Paris since the war, the then Prince Wilhelm was there in complete secrecy, and the story recalled to-day is that an officious countryman, having bowed low to him in the exhibition grounds, was discreetly informed by an aide-de-camp that he had been over-zealous. The Lite Empress Frederick openly visited Paris on one occasion since the war, but the visit was not a success. - A painful mistake was made in arranging an expedition to the ruins of St. Cloud. The idea of the daugh-ter-in-law of the German Emperor, who was crowned at Versailles, visiting St. Cloud, whence the German army had shelled Paris, aroused bitter susceptibilities, and afterwards numbers of prominent men in the Parisian world of art and letters, whom she desired to meet, declined the honour of being presented to her. Between then and February 12 last, when her grandson was shown by two French generals over the museums where the proudest relics of French military history are kept, Mines have indeed changcd.