EX-CROWN PRINCE.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18581, 30 May 1930, Page 16

EX-CROWN PRINCE.

' WELL READ MAN Mr Edgar Wallace, during a recent visit to Berlin, dined with the German ex-Crown Prince, and his impression of a war personality about whom so many stories have been told, as recounted in the Daily Mail, are interesting. If you are a public man and you wear your hair brushed back from your forehead, nothing is more certain than that the caricaturist will draw you with a forehead that slopes back to a point of imbecility. The man who received me in tha charming ante-room of a beautiful private house somewhere near the Tiergarten has grey hair dressed this way. He has a high forehead, keen, intelligent eyes with a peculiar and attractive expression, a strong, keen, cleanshaven face, and the slim figure of a boy. Under hi£ white dress tie was the blue cross of the Order Pour le Merite with a broad black and white ribbon. On his dress coat one star trlittered— I imagine it was the Black Eagle—and beneath that an Iron Cross. He greeted me in well-nigh perfect English. He looks at you straightly, inquiringly, he is very ready to smile; he has a sense of humour. Skilful propaganda has caricatured him so effectively that it comes almost as a shock to find—far from all those caricatures—how simple and human a man he is. You see him occasionally in Berlin, at the theatre and sport. “I saw ‘Journey’s Ena’ four times. The man who wrote that knows his front, line! The friendliness, the brutality of it! I have seen Shaw's play four times. We call it the ‘Kaiser Von Amerika’: in England it is called ‘The Apple Cart’ isn't it? Shaw is really wonderful! He would be the first tc admit it." I talked very sketchily about the war, more fully about Germany and its future. of politics not at all. “I get a certain amount of amusement out of reading Journalistic comments about myself published during the war. and especially in reading those pseudo-historical works the authors of which are so convinced of their profound knowledge of the psychology of war generals! ‘‘One dav I am a malignant commander directing the destruction of cathedrals, the next day I am the merest figure-head with no active control, but holding a command in an army because I am the heir of an emperor. In one newspaper I am living in luxury beyond the reach of guns and bombing airplanes, my life one saturnalia after another; in another I am behind the front line directing operations. This paper makes me a figure of fun, that one a vicious ogre. ‘‘ln one book the war was made because the Emperor feared my contemptuous smile. I am intriguing on the eve of war—a German machiavelli —manoeuvring Austria into a position from which she cannot recede. “The truth is-and it is so well known in Germany that what I say wall sound trite to German ears-that scarcely one man in Germany was more anxious to avoid war than I. and nobody was quite so helpless to prevent it." He lit a thin cigarette with a tiny straw mouthpiece. “Propaganda! sometimes a deadly, insidious weapon. It changes the very character and appearance of a man, supplies him with motives of which he has never dreamt, turns his most

j innocent amusements into vices, creates around him a poisoned atmosphere. I once saw’ a so-called ‘authentic’ drawing of me sitting at a table surrounded by empty champagne bottles—it was entirely imaginary, for I drink very little and never in the daytime.” He laughed; he has a very infectious laugh; one finds oneself smiling in sympathy. He is singularly well read, reads every book on social problems that is ; written in English or German. He has always been a good mixer. The members of the regimental messes who met him in India will testify to this. The time in India, is by the way, a very | pleasant memory for him. “What good boys they w*ere. those English soldiers I met day after day! And how perfectly splendid they were to me! I returned from India a pronounced admirer of England. I have always been very fond of the late King Edward, who was always very kind to me. and invited me over several times. I spent some fame in Scotland. What a beautiful country—one of the most | lovely in Europe. The Englishman who J admits he doesn't know r Scotland j should be ashamed of himself. I want ; to go to England one day. and my ! pleasure at being there will compenI sate for the fact that this time I go | there as a private citizen. | “I never had any illusions about England after she came into the war I know the character of her people. When one of our generals doubted the military value of the nation, I predicted exactly the number that Great Britain and her dependencies would put Into the field.” He talked for a long time of the personal losses he had sustained. “Most of my best friends w’ere killed in the first years of the war. That is the horrible experience of every country. So many of the best men of the nation go out in the first battles. Some of the Sights I saw I shall never forget. Nivelle's attack In 1917 was one of them. So many French soldiers died before the line held by my army on j the Chemin des Dames.” ! He told me that it was very rarely that he had British troops on his front. The British were farther north. All j connections between the German and I other princely families were broken off ''during the war and have never been ' resumed. | “I never realised how odd the situa- • tion was until the illness of King J George. You were in Germany at the j time—l believe I heard you were—and you know how impressed were all classes of German people, and how Nmrly ! bulletins were issued as they were published in London. I was. as I say, very fond of King Edward. King George I have unfortunately met only | rarely. During his very severe illness I wanted to write, expressing my concern and sympathy, but there was nobody to whom I could write so that my I sympathy would be comprehended.”