QUEEN SOPHIE'S PLEA.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16305, 21 December 1920, Page 6

QUEEN SOPHIE'S PLEA.

PREPARING CORFU PALACE WILHELM INVITED TO GREECE. "Le Matin”, states that the former Queen Sophie has invited the former Kaiser to Greece, and workmen aro already preparing Ids palace at Corfu. The correspondent of “ The Times” at Lucerne interviewed Queen Sophie; who protested that she was always strongly pro-British. Her mother was English, and spent much of her time, in England with Queen Victoria. “You must not forgot that we always talk Kuglish to each other and the children," she added Curly this year "Wilhelm expressed a wish "to be allowed to live privately at 11 Ilia ” castle of the Achilleion, in Corfu. Tho Achilleion was up till quite recently used as a hospital. It a beautiful place, surrounded by magnificent ten aces—places to dream in—-and it has been said that it is too gorgeous and too peaceful a part of the*worJd to bo suitable as a retiring place for the man who made the war. It is a great white villa overlooking the soa, and is fronted with grey-green olive trees and a wonderful avenue of pines down and down to tlie deep blue motionless sea. Every turn of the terraces bruigs one to a new view of beauty. Their deep shade, their pools, 'thjjir foliage, have no parallel, IN or has the interior of the castle. Its decoration is tho Munich school at its worst, Teutflnism unashamed. On a psendo-Pompeiism there has been super-imposed art of tho kind that • raged in tho Gorman Empire and Austria' when the Kaiser was a vounger and more foolish man. Nothing was altered by tho French authorities. They even left that crowning folly—the chair m tho form of a saddle, on which the Kaiser sat when at his desk. There is tho secret little terrace on to wlucti give tho windows of his private apartments—the little terrace where he held conclaves with Ids agents in the Mediterranean. There is furniture and hangings raioiftated to make any but a Prussian shudder. The desecration of that wonderful wto by such a building is one more crime m W ilhelm's catalogue. Out in the grounds, too there is the Kai ser s favourite piece of statuary— a .colossal figure of Achilles staring out to sea. It is impressive, if o nlv for its ttzo and appearance of strength \ guide while showing a party around tho castle grounds picked up „ and hurled it at the statue. The omitted a hollow elatW It S made of tin.