PRINCELINGS AND DRILL.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 879, 4 January 1889, Page 2

PRINCELINGS AND DRILL.

A. sorrespondent writes from Baden Baden : —“ Without believing all that one reads even in the generally unimaginative German newspapers, I fancy that the description given by a. local newspaper called the Henneberger Zeitung of how the four sons of the German Emperor, wbo are spending the summer at Oberhof in Thuringia, amuse themselves, is not far from the truth. This paper says that at the spot where the young princes play, a redoubt with two small guns on it has been built, while a hundred yards away is a bivouac. I had scarcely taken my seat in the park when I saw the four princes come up ; one of them was beating the drum, while two of the others were marching in step, very erect, and. with their guns over their shoulders ; they were accompanied by one mounted and two dismounted gendarmes, who were playing with them. The ladies of honour halted about half a mile off with the fourth and youngest boy, who was not in uniform, though he wore a small cuirassier’s cap. Concealed behind a hedge, I watched the princes storm the redoubt, go through their drill, under the supervision of the gendarmes, who showed them how to handle their arms and to manoeuvre according to regulation. The Crown Prince, who is six years old, seems to take great interest in military matters, for he asked what was the use of a camp, 'and when this had been explained to him he added, ‘ln camp men smoke their pipes.’ The writer, from his hiding place behind the hedge, saw the boys bathe with the gendarmes, which must have been rather awkward for the ladies-of-honour unless they looked the other way; and he also witnessed a battalion of infantry march past the castle later in the day, when, to again quote him verbatim, “ the Crown Prince called out to his brothers as soon as the head of the column was abreast of them. “Present arms!’ and the little soldiers executed the movement so correctly that the whole battalion was moved to admiration. The four princes remained with arms fixed during the defile of the battalion, which never marched past so well as it did on the Oberhof-road before the little princes of our reigning House.”