“Blind, Green & Wrong-Headed” Empress Frederick’s Letters Flay Her Son, The Ex-Kaiser

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 532, 8 December 1928, Page 26

“Blind, Green & Wrong-Headed” Empress Frederick’s Letters Flay Her Son, The Ex-Kaiser

CATHING criticism of her son, the ex-Kaiser William 11. is contained in the sensational “Letters of the Empress Frederick.” These letters of Queen Victoria's daughter who became Empress of Germany have been edited by her godson, Sir Frederick Ponsonby, the Keeper of the Privy Purse, who • smuggled them to England under the ex-Kaiser’s nose. Examples of the outspoken way in which the Empress Frederick scorned the ex-Kaiser are: William is as blind and green, wrong-headed, and violent on politics as can be. He is so headstrong, so impatient of any control . . . that it is quite useless to attempt to enlighten him. He was as rude, as disagreeable and as impertinent to me as possible. Most despotic and arbitrary in all his instincts. The strangely indiscreet nature of the Empress Frederick is shown by her comments on her son, William: William (she wrote to Queen Victoria) is as blind and green, wrong-headed, and violent on politics, as can be. . . . He is so headstrong, so impatient of any control, except the 'Emperor's, and so suspicious of everyone who might be only a half-hearted admirer of Bismarck’s that it is quite useless to attempt to enlighten him. RUDE AND DISAGREEABLE When it was discovered that her husband was stricken with cancer and the future Empress Frederick was accused of trying to hide the truth, and sacrificing her husband and the German doctors to her ambition, she received no help from her ! son. She wrote to Queen Victoria: I You ask how Willie was when he was ! here! He was as rude, as disagreeable, and as impertinent to me as possible when he arrived, but I pitched into him with, I am afraid, considerable violence, and he became quite nice and gentle and amiable (for him) . . . William never reflects. At a later date she wrote: Bergman told W'illie that his papa had six months to live. He (Willie) left yesterday morning. .Not one word of sympathy or affection did he utter, and I was distressed to see how very haughty he has become and what tremendous airs he -gives himself. It is no doubt the. effect of being told so often that he may be Emperor in less than a year. At the moment of the Emperor Frederick’s death a cordon of soldiers was secretly drawn round Friedrichskron so that no documents might be removed without the knowledge of the new Emperor . . . Vainly did the Empress Frederick appeal to him; equally vainly did she request Bismarck the day after the Emperor’s death to grant her an interview. Subsequent letters reveal the poignant distress at her son’s conduct following the death of his father and his succession to the throne. What am I to think and feel when I see my own son approve of and encourage the insults to his father’s memory and his mother’s reputation? GENERAL'S INSULT? All was finished with her husband’s death: We had a mission, we felt and we knew it—we were Papa's and your children. We were faithful to what we believed and knew to be right. We loved Germany—we wished to see her strong and great, not onl3 r with the sword, but with all that righteous in culture, in progress, in liberty. We wished to see the people happy and free. Had she had her way how much that is tragic might have been changed! It is curious to note that one of those who most cruelly insulted her was General Winterfeldt. It fell to his son many years later to sit sobbing at that table in*Foch’s saloon car at Compiegne, where the terms of the armistice were dictated. Such is the irony of history.

The Empress’s letters end 'with a note of apprehension. William, she says, is “most despotic and arbitrary in all his instincts.” “Like a balloon, if one did not hold him fast on a string, he would go no one knows whither.” letters smuggled to ENGLAND The letters, as Sir Frederick Ponsonby discloses in his introduction, came into his possession in 1901 in a curious and dramatic manner. When the Empress was dying King Edward went to Germany to see his sister, accompanied by Sir Frederick, then an equerry-in-waiting. Three days after their arrival at Friedrichshof the dying Empress sent for Sir Frederick and told him that she wished him to take her private correspondence back to England, as she was surrounded by spies. When he consented she said that she would send the letters to his room at one o’clock in the morning, and added:

I don’t want a soul to know that they have been taken away, and certainly Willie (her son. the ex-Kaiser William II.) must not have them, nor must he ever know that you have got them. AT 1 A.M. The castle clock had boomed one and Sir Frederick was writing in his room when there was a quiet knock on his door “and four men came in carrying two boxes about the size of portmanteaux, and covered with black oilcloth. . . .” Sir Frederick had assumed that the expression “letters” meant a packet that could easily be concealed in his own luggage. On the day of departure Sir Frederick was talking to the Kaiser in the hall when he saw these two black boxes, looking very conspicuous, being carried down the stairs and out to the wagon, under his host’s nose. At any moment he expected the Kaiser to notice them, but he was holding forth on some subject that interested him. Sir Frederick got the papers to England -without misadventure, and they were deposited in a safe place. After the Empress’s death it was discovered that her private letters and papers had disappeared. Every room in the castle was ransacked by special police while cavalry surrounded the grounds. LOCKED UP FOR 27 YEARS The letters were, in fact, locked up in Sir Frederick’s private house, Cell Farm, at Old Windsor, and there they remained for 27 years. During all this time (writes Sir Frederick) the question what the Empress intended me to do with them has constantly occurred to me. The curious part is that she should not have confided her intention to her brother, King Edward, or given him any hint of what she had in her mind. The most probable theory, thinks Sir Frederick, is that the Empress, writhing under criticisms of her conduct and the part she played in German politics, had resolved to make her own side of the question known by selecting certain letters and editing them for publication.