CONFLICTING REPORTS OF CROWN PRINCE'S DEATH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17008, 15 November 1918, Page 5

CONFLICTING REPORTS OF CROWN PRINCE'S DEATH.

SAID TO HAVE BEEN KILLED BY GERMAN TROOPS

ANOTHER STORY OF ASSASSINATION IN A TRAIN. Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. ? AMSTERDAM. Nov. 13. The frontier correspondent of the Dutch newspaper Vaderland states that the Crown Prince attempted to cross the frontier into Holland on Sunday morning. A sentry turned him back. He reattempted to cross early on Monday morning, and a fight ensued, in which the Prince was killed.

A Munich news agency confirms the news that the Crown Prince was killed, and adds that he met his death at the hands of his own troops. The Paris correspondent of the Exchange Telegraph states that the Crown Prince was assassinated in an escorted train on the Dutch frontier, and that the body bears bullet and bayonet wounds. Australian and .N.Z. Cablo Association. WASHINGTON. Nov. 13. The State Department is unable to secure any confirmation of the reports that the Crown Prince was shot. It is believed that he reached Holland.

, Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, eldest son of the deposed Kaiser, was something of a stormy petrel hovering over the troubled waters of German politics before the war. " During the great strugglo he has figured largely as an army group commander, and particularly as at least the nominal head of the forces which rushed to their death before Verdun. Ho has been a problem to the student of present-day history, the estimation of his character and possible future presenting an apparently insoluble problem. No two of the many character-sketches written around him agree in the salient particulars. For instance a vivid sketch of the Crown Prince as he appeared to a neutral observer has been given by an American long resident in Berlin. He first met tho then heir to the thrones of Prussia and Germany in the spring of 1905, a few months before his marriage, when ho was 23 years of ago. He was in the uniform of a German army officer, but looked more like a corps-student. Dress and mannerisms and the rakish angle at which he woro his cap gave him a swagger not in keeping with tho rest of the army officers. He was a slender figure, which was accentuated by his height. He was nearly 6ft tall. Ho was then the despair of traffic policemen and all drivers of motor-cars owing to his recklessness. On one occasion he was going so fast through a city street that his car climbed the sidewalk, and he crashed into a lamp-post. His car was smashed, but ho escaped injury. He was seen often to pull up his horse or car for the purpose of giving a coin to a child or a seedy-looking passer-by, a form of charity in the eye of the public which appealed very strongly to him. ' The . same observer, describing the Crown Prince after the outbreak of war said there were lines on his face which made him look older than his 33 year's. In tho outer world ho was generally believed to be one of tho leading spirits of the military party in Germany, but among his own people he was not credited with sufficient ability or influence to be much of ft factor. Another and very different description is given by Captain Edward Lyeli Fox another American. He says: "The Crown Prince is clever, amazingly so. His'face doca not show it. .. . There is no denying that his features look weak. He has often been photographed grinning in a silly way, but the grin can be sinister too. For he is one of the most dangerous and sinister men in the world. . • • Because of his skill as an actor, because of his ruthless ideas of Divine right, because of his recklessness, of his lack of religious fear— fear his father has—the Crown Prince is a much more dangerous man than tho Kaiser."