Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 167, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 August 1917 — British Girl Balks The Kaiser’s Plans [ARTICLE]

British Girl Balks The Kaiser’s Plans

HOW completely we have put to sleep these very dear cousins of ours, the British!” His imperial highness, the crown prince made J:his remark to me as he sat in the corner of a first-class compartment of an express that had ten minutes before left Paddington station for the West of England. The crown prince, though not generally known, frequently visited England and Scotland incognito, and we were upon one of those flying visits on that bright summer’s morning as the express tore through the delightful English scenery of the Thames valley, with the first stopping place at Plymouth, our destination. The real reason for the visit of my young hot-headed imperial master was concealed from me. Four days before he had dashed into my room at the Marmor palace at Potsdam. He had been with the emperor in Berlin all the morning, and had motored back with all speed. Something had occurred, but what it was I failed to discern. He carried some papers in the packet of his military tunic. From their color I saw that they were secret reports —those documents prepared solely for the eyes of the kaiser and those of his oldest son.

He took a big linen-lined envelope and, placing the papers in it, carefully sealed it in wax. “We are going to London, Heltzendorff. Put that in your dispatch box. I may want- it when we are in England.” “To London —when?” I asked, surprised at the suddenness of our journey, because I knew that we were due at Weimar in two days’ time. —“We leave at six o’clock this evening,” was the crown prince’s reply. “Koehler has ordered the salon to be attached to the Hook of Holland train. Hardt has already left Berlin to engage rooms for us at the Ritz, in London.” “And the suite?” I asked, for it was one of my duties to arrange who traveled with his imperial highness. “Oh! We’ll leave Eckhardt at home,” he said, for he always hated the surveillance of the commissioner of secret police. “We shall only want Schuler, my valet, and Knof.” We never traveled anywhere without Knof, the chauffeur, who was an impudent, arrogant young man, intensely disliked by everyone. So it was that the four of us duly landed at Harwich and traveled to London, our identity unknown to the jostling crowd of tourists returning from their annual holiday on the continent. At the Ritz, too, “Willie” was not recognized, because all photographs of him show him in an elegant -uniform. In atweed 'suit, or in evening clothes, he presents an unhealthy, weedy, and somewhat insignificant figure. His imperial highness had been on~ the previous day to Carlton House terrace to a luncheon given by the ambassador’s wife, but to which nobody was invited hut .the embassy staff. That same evening an imperial courier arrived from Berlin and called at the Ritz, where, on being shown into the crown prince’s sitting room, he handed his highness a sealed letter from his wife. “Willie.” 33 reading it, became very grave. Then, striking a match, he lit it, and held it until it was consumed. There was a second letter —which I uaw from the emperor. This he also read, and then gave vent to an expression of impatience. For a few minutes he reflected, and, it was then he announced that we must go to Plymouth next day.