THE KAISER'S HEALTH.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11113, 1 December 1914, Page 6

THE KAISER'S HEALTH.

CAUSES OF HIS FAINTING FITS. Those who have witnessed in Ber- ■ iin the insensate flattery showered on Kaiser Wilhelm by Germans and foreigners alike are rather amused, writes the correspondent of the Evening Standard lately resident in Berlin, by tho story that he has jnst been the victim of ‘‘a flt brought on 'by neuralgic pains/ The explanation of the cause is hardlv convincing, but the rest may readily be believed, and the result of it in the Emperor’s entourage vividly appeals to the imagination. The German Emperor loves to appear as the robust warrior whose ardour and fitness'for the fray are only restrained by his high-Souled principles. In reality he is delicate, and, what is more, is so nervous and so obsessed by the dangers of disease that any petty complaint finds him dismayed and weak. He lives in constant dread that germs of disease may come near him, and his doctors have a harassed life from the moment his Majesty makes his first sign of a cold It is true that colds develop very rapidly with William 11. bringing either an unusually inflamed and painful throat or a fever which one of the Staff surgeons admitted was suggestive of ague. BAD CIRCULATION. A British physician who once studied his case from collected evidence told me that the probable defect with the Kaiser is bad circulation of the blood. This accounts for tna fever, and tor the tendency shown at times to break out in tumours on the neck. It may also be taken as tbe real cause of the seizures with which his Majesty has several times been taken. These have been put down to epilepsy, but this is doubtful. Outside the inner circle of the Potsdam Court very little is known about these fits. At the most they are said to have numbered half a dozen, and to have been less frequent though more startling in later years. The physician mentioned explained them as a temporary and modified form of congestion, brought on hy a sudden pitcli of mental excitement at a moment when tbe brain is fatigued by concentration. It is understood to bring about a mental breakdown and a semi-paralytic unconsciousness lasting a few hours, and really incapacitates the Kaiser for two or three days. RECONSTRUCTING A ROMAN CAMP. One of the last times that such a seizure was recorded was in the summer of 1913. Their Majesties were staying at Homburg, in the Taunus hills, and on the Saalburg, a bill near by, where a Roman camp was said to have once existed. The Emperor one day motored up to enjoy the view from the hill, and made a cursory examination of the old’ Roman vallum, or ditch. The next day a trainload of pioneers was despatched from Mayence. They were set on to reconstruct the Roman fortifications as Professor X and Y , and of course —the Kaiser were convinced they originally were . designed. The Imperial edition of toy castle building in the sands lasted nearly a week. It was a week of wet weather, , and the soldiers got soaked, but the Empeior came up every day to see. At the end of two days the pioneers found that they had to use spades such as (William 11. was convinced) the Romans had used. Then came visits by generals and school children. But although all this was chronicled in the Press, with great talk about the revival of a work of Roman Knltnr, nothing was said about the completion when it came. The strain of designing spades and palisades, <Jf keeping the men up to the mark, of explaining the Roman tactics to German Generals, and arranging for the Barnum-like advertisement of the whole, had been too much for him; when the excitement uf completion came William 11. had a fainting attack, and little more was said of his movements for several days.