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Otago Daily Times, Issue 20319, 30 January 1928, Page 6

A HOHENZOLLERN BIRTHDAY. As the years go on, the ex-Kaiser of Germany recedes more into the background as a personage in whom the world at large takes any special intest. The little coterie at Doom of which ho is the central figure does its best in the maintenance of a ceremonial of a shadowy kind, and endeavours to make a brave show on occasions such as the royal birthday. But the account of the “subdued rejoicings ” that attended the august anniversary marking the ex-Kaiser’s attainment of his sixtyninth year presents a picture which has ceased to possess either interest or novelty. As pride was a besetting sin of Wilhelm of Hohenzollern when he ruled the German nation and lectured it on the virtues of militarism, so pride is outwardly the attribute which sustains him in neglecting nothing that might still attach a halo of majesty, however faded, to his fallen estate. The travesty of a royal court at Doom has never been other than a pathetic spectacle. It has even ceased to be regarded as a curiosity. The majority of the German people have obviously lost their interest in the Hohenzollerns and are well content that they should be forgotten. There is a German monarchist party, it is true, but it emanates more smoke than hre, and as time passes it seems to be losing some of its enthusiasm and capacity for self-assertion. Thus it is left to the ex-Kaiser’s select entourage at Doom to endeavour to make it appear that a Hohenzollern birthday rs still a matter of more than everyday importance. At Doom itself the demonstration seems this year to have been more laboured than usual, and Berlin was apparently so preoccupied with its own affairs that the great event might have escaped public attention altogether but for the references to it in one or two Monarchist newspapers. The Deutsche Tageszeitung certainly made an heroic effort when it offered its tribute to the “pure, righteous, human aspirations ” of the ex-Kaiser, and another journal was bold enough to reassert its faith that Wilhelm will yet return to the Fatherland. But nowhere, according to a Berlin despatch, was a word written or spoken expressive of a wish to see the exile seated once more upon the throne of Germany. The Fatherland has learned its lesson, and has no place for the ex-Kaiser, or for the type of monarchy which he represented, in its present calculations. Except for a Prussian element, which clings to the old traditions, Germany seems to be satisfied with her present form of government. Probably the Monarchists themselves realise that it is not worth dreaming about the restoration of a regime such as that which had its pivot and centre in Potsdam. The ex-Kaiser, while doing his best at Doom in the old theatrical way to invest his existence with a shadow of regal pomp, counts for very little nowadays in his forfeited and chastened realm.