CURRENT TOPICS

Southland Times, Issue 17664, 23 February 1916, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS

THE KAISER’S INCOME. In spite of bis share in the profits Of Krupp’s, one of the few institutions which grows fat on war, the Kaiser is said to have already lost a million or two since August, 1914. When the war ends, his income, like that of other German capitalists, will be a great deal smaller than it was. Indeed, that would probably be the case even if his armies were to win. At the time of the financial census for the. assessing of the tax which was to provide the sum of £ 100,000,000, as a war contribution, the Kaiser stood first amongst his subjects, with an income of £900,000 though he was only third in the general classification of fortunes. Frau Bertha Krupp von Bohlen headed the list with £83,000,000, an income of £640,000. Prince Henckel von Donnersmarck was second with £10,000,000, and an income of £020,000. The Kaiser’s visible annuities, according to the same statistics, wore: Civil list, £875,000; rents, etc., £175,000; interest on Crown Treasury, £225,000. Ills visible estate consisted of: Real estate, Crown forests, etc., £3,500,000; developed estate, £2,000,000; property in Berlin, £900,000; total, £6,400,000. There were also the following transferable securities:—The Crown treasure established by Frederick William HI, after the battle of Jena, together with the addition of £2,50,000 made by William I out of the French indemnity of £200,000,000, making a total of £1,000,000; the Kaiser’s share of the £4,000,000 left by William I, and his investments since he came to the throne. It is Impossible to estimatS these, but the Kaiser is known to havs big holdings in the Hamburg-Amerika, the Reichsbank, and Krupp's. Thess holdings are not in his own name, however, but in the names of Privy Councillors Muller and Grimm. His share in Williams I’s fortune is estimated at £125,000. Altogether, his fortune at the beginning of the war may have amounted from two and a .half to three millions sterling. But all his investments, except in Krupp’s, have enormously depreciated. AIRSHIP DESTROYERS. One of the innumerable suggestions for London’s anti-aircraft defence is the building of “Super-Zeppelins.” The title is quite misleading, for what is meant by the editor of the "Aeroplane,” who makes the suggestion, is not a further development of the Zeppelin at all, but a kind of destroyer airship, in which everything else would be sacrificed to speed in rising as well as in travelling on the horizontal plane. Indeed, he says of the proposed aircraft that “it might well bear the same proportion to a Zeppelin that a destroyer does to a battleship. The reason why, in these days, a destroyer cannot attack a battleship is that the battleship has the advantage of it in mere gun power, and consequently can keep it out of range. The difference in the case of the superZeppelin is that it can always get out of range of any gun that a Zeppelin can carry, until such time as it gets above the Zeppelin, and then the force of gravity gives its bombs a range exceeding tliat of any gun which so frail a ( structure as a Zeppelin could possibly carry on its back.” The idea is that the building of these new airshipdestroyers would be a much simpler proposition than attempting to rival the Germans in the building of airships, which, obviously, would take years of experiment. For the destroyers would not have to carry more than the smallest fraction of the fuel or explosives needed by an airship that has to travel a long distance. So long as they could tra\el fast and high, that would be enough. Britain possesses at least three airships at present, one of them a Parseval, bought from Germany before the war. But none of them are comparable with the present-day Zeppelin, and no firstclass airship has yet been built in Britain.