KAISER'S FLIGHT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20840, 6 April 1931, Page 12

KAISER'S FLIGHT.

HINDENBURG'S ATTITUDE. DENIAL OF A STATEMENT. President Ifindenburg's personal manifestos are so rare to-day in Germany that considerable interest has been aroused by an official intimation ( that he recently gave tho official organ of reaction, Kreuzzeitung. Lectures now being given in Germany's eastern provinces by an exofficer turned Republican, Major Anker, says the Berlin correspondent of the Observer, London, are of the deepest interest to the major's old comrades-in-

arms. In 1922 Major Anker was received by Ilindenburg, who, he maintains, told him that tho Kaiser's flight to Holland came as a shock of surprise to him and that ho bore no responsibility for it, in spite of his feeling it incumbent upon him to take this responsibility toward the nation when the time came to justify it. President Ilindenburg has mow informed the Kreuzzeitung that although he certainly received Major Anker as the son of an eld friend and conversed with him at some length, it is incorrect to say that lie ever expressed this view about the Kaiser's flight. On the contrary, he had already repudiated Major Anker's statement in the Kreuzzeitung of November 3, 1928. The major's political views had changed in the meantime.

To obtain a correct opinion of a matter which will be of as great interest to posterity as it is to-day, a correspondent of the Frankfurter Zcitung requested an explanation from Major Anker, who received him at Konigsberg, a stronghold of Nationalism to-day as an outpost of German thought and culture in the Prussia separated from Germany by the Polish corridor. The major upholds his statement firmly in tho face of official denials, lie says lie bases it on notes written five minutes after tho Ilindenburg interview in his hotel. President Ilindenburg was, Major Anker declares, extremely upset by the account given by the ex-Crown Prince, in his memoirs, of events on November 9, 1918. lie declared that his own attitude at the time was dictated by expediency and that ho was permitting the opinion to circulate that he had advised the Kaiser's flight. In reality; ho was surprised to hear on November 10 that tho Emperor had actually left the country. Major Anker adds that many men of very pronounced reactionary views were extremely pleased at the time when he informed" them privately of Hindenburg's real sentiments, as it. convinced them that the Kaiser had acted precipitately and that he had no advice from Ilindenburg lf> that effect. The major adds that tho only reason for making the President s remarks public to-day is the necessity to refute Nationalist attacks now being made upon him oil account of his change of political opinion.