"POTSDAM PRINCES."

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11685, 29 April 1916, Page 3

"POTSDAM PRINCES."

STORIES OF A GOVERNESS. There is no end to the light that is lining thrown on the domestic life of ih■* Kaiser and his family. The latest hook on the subject Lear? the title, " Pot-dam Princes/' and :'s by Miss Ethel Howard, who was English governess to the Kaiser's children some twenty years ago.. The importance which the Kaiser attached to early military training is shown once more. Almost as soon as the children could toddle uniforms were made for Them; and at the age at which the ordinary baby learns to wave Its hand they v.eje taught, the stiffest and smartest of military salutes. Their first and practically then - .only tcys were tin soldiers, -cannons, forts, anything and even thing calculated to develop martial ardour. '•.NOT SO TERRTBLE/' Miss Howard, in recalling the first occasion ou which she was formally presented to the Kaiser, found to her relief that he was not so terrible as . she had feared: •• He was really very kind to me, and put me quite at my ease He chatted gaily of his boyhood and of a certain visit to his grandmother, Queen Victoria, saying Jiow much he had enjoyed it. 'Yes/. lie said, 'my graudmama had great ideas on the healthy schoolboy's thick bread and limited butter.' He was not (|uite so gocx.l-loc.king as his photograph, but, to give him his due, he really impressed me then as an extremely handsome man." The. Kaiser, curious to relate, was verf fond of rings, and almost every one of his fingers was adorned by them. The strength he put into his handshake was. .Miss Howard says, something to he remembered. ; BAT) GERMAN. Miss Howard's bad German seems to have caused the Emperor no end of amusement. One day. at luncheon, she was'seated on the Kaiser's left, ana suddenly he took away her soup spoon : •• Xow is your chance to speak Germau. Miss Howard; ask for a spoon,'' ho said. Turning to the lackey behind my chair, I ordered him to bring me ' einen grossen Teufel,' instead of ' einen grossen Loffel," the word for spoon. Roars of laughter greeted this, foremost among them being the Kaiser's own. I had asked for ' : a big; devil' to he brought to me instead of a big spoon !" Two days later. Miss Howard received n paragraph from a German newspaper to the effect that the English girls were very go-ahead persons, and that one of them, when accorded the. honour of sitting nest to the Kaiser hims?lf had liad the temerity to call a spoon a devil! THE KAISERIX AS DIPLOMAT. Miss Howard '.rent to Berlin expecting to find the German Empress something of a, noneptity. but soon discovered that she was mistaken : Although she played second fiddle she seemed to do it from the point of view of diplomacy, and very successful diplomacy it was. She was always deferential to his opinions except when they clashed with her maternal solicitude, and then she managed to get. her own •\vav without fu«s. She- was always ready to do whatever he wished, ride with him when ho asked her, go wherever he pleased, and was altogether an excellent wife. The greatest thing about the Kaiserin. Miss Howard thinks, was her intense mother-love. " Whenever she had a spnre moment -whenever she could make the time-she would always be with her children." AX UNFORTUNATE SNEEZE. There is one date which the German Socialists keep particularly, and on it Miss Howard was warned, never *> wear anvthing red. Her Majesty used to be uniiauallv anxious fur the .Kaiser s safety as he drove through the streets of Berlin. One incident, which she recalls in this connection is rather anius- ~ T ha v e reason to remember the day on account of something very remote from the Socialistic creed. At luncheon ol the dar I .sr.ce/.ed, ami 1 lece.ved Sue of xhe severest reprimands. j ever got from the Kaisorni, who to d m never to do such tlung again 1 nDolo-i'ed. and said* T d.d not know C^prerentit;and^hethe^^ top a place under ones eye, ™ n " time, would eneetually so, ■ sneSe - I. have since discovered that . to p?S one's nppor lip is a iroro infallible preventive. llin desfcMiss Howard tells »*jr> ly, and her book is very readme.