DUKE AND DUCHESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20244, 2 May 1929, Page 14

DUKE AND DUCHESS.

A VISIT TO BERLIN.

ca'll AT HINDENBURG'S palace. . [from our own correspondent.] LONDON, March 19. On their way to attend the wedding of the Crown Prince of Norway, the Duke and Duchp.ss of York spent a day in Berlin. They were met at the station by Sir Horace Rumbold, the British Ambassador, and drove straight to the Embassy in the Wilhelmstrasse.

It is the first time the Duke and Duchess have erer visited the German capital, and it is the first time -that any members of the British Royal Family have visited Berlin since ths war. , They showed a keen interest in everything they saw, writes the correspondent of the Daily Express. They made the most of their day in Berlin. The morning was spent in a walk through the Unter den Linden on their way to the great castle of the ex-Kaiser, which has now been converted into a Republican mus.eum. They stopped for an instant to look into the public library and the quadrangle of the university.

The cast!?, itself greatly interested the visitors and their guide point.ed out the marks of machine-gun fire still visible on the facade and also the famous balcony on the first storey, which was blown to pieces by the artillery fire of the Socialist troops who were trying to eject the Spartacists at Christmas, 1918. The afternoon was spent at Potsdam exploring the wonders of Sans Souci. The Duchess was charmed with the quiet dignity and beauty of this dream palace of Frederick ths Great.

No official cognisance was taken of the visit by the German Government, this being -in accordance with the Duke and Duchess* desire for privacy and the observance of strict incognito during their passage across Germany. The Duke left his card on President von Kindenburg at the Presidential Palace, and the President immediately returned the courtesy at the embassy. "It was a happy idea which led the Duke and Duchess of York to pay an unofficial visit to Berlin," says the Daily Chronicle, in a leading article. "No member of our Royal Family had preceded them there since the war; nor. while war memories still rankled, would such a visit would have been in place. Bub British opinion , towards Germany—and in a .large measure German opinion toward Great Britain —has reached the stage of wishing bygones to be bygones; and it should be as natural for-a British Prince to visit the chief city of the German Republic as to call in at Paris or New York."