Secret life of the Kaiser from birth to exile, from the private papers and diaries of the Baroness von Larisch-Reddern [pseud.] of the imperial household

Front matter

Class Ul i7L2^'^

Book .Fh e

GoRyTightN

Preface

PAGE

How the Inside Story of the Kaiser's and Kaiserin's Life Was Written — The Chance Meeting at Moscow between the Baroness von Larisch and the American Newspaper Man — The Story up to December, 1918 . . . xiii

Chapter I

The Kaiser's Birth and What Happened on That Occasion — Kaiser Was Beaten into Life with a Wet Towel— His Rage When after His Father's Death He Found Queen Victoria's Telegram Asking Whether He "Was a Fine Boy "—The Doctors Were Late in Discovering the Royal Baby's Deformed Arm and Hand — Nature of the Deformity, Which Kaiser Tries to Hide— All Sorts of Maneuvers — Kaiser's Morbid Fear of Illness— Has Always Been Ailing More or Less — A Grave Trial to His Valets — Hearing of Death in Neighbor's House He Ran Away from Home and Hid in the Apartments— Haunted by the White Lady— Fear of Illness Causes Him to Maltreat Servants— Even His Lady Loves Suffer When Someone Has a Cold in the Family 1

Chapter II

Kaiser's Madness Doesn't Seem to Be Real— Perhaps It Was Feigned According to Plan — But His Blood-Thirstiness Is Very Real— What a Famous Alienist Has to Say on the Subject — The Kaiser Likened to a Junker Who Feeds Like a Pig — Kaiser's Assumption of Divine Powers — That Famous Noodle, Prince Henry, Trained Like a Poodle Dog— Jabbers Anything "Big Brother" Tells Him to Repeat — Kaiser's Modest Estimate of Himself —The "Insult to Majesty" Humbug— " May the Old Man Rot in Prison"— A Vanderbilt About to Be Fired at by Kaiser's Sentinel — Kaiser's Real Idea as to a Soldier's Duty — First Draft of an Infamous-Famous Speech — Kaiser an Epileptic 19

CHAPTER III Decollette Talk and Dresses — Kaiser Wondered Where the

Crown Prince, When a Little Boy, Got His Nasty

Tongue From — How the Kaiser Shocked Poor " Nicky "

—Organized Imperial Shams— Swinish Table Manners of

vil viii CONTENTS

PAGB

Courtiers — A New York Periodical Shocki Kaiser and Comes Near Causing the Sack of a Royal Minister — How the Song-of-Aegis Fraud Was Perpetrated— Row a German Prince Demeaned Himself Before the Kaiser — As a Strategist, the Kaiser Was a Joke — Fraudulent Stories Regarding Kaiser's ''Ceaseless*' Activities "For the Public Good " — He Worked Very Hard Enjoying Himself Instead — Employed Artists to do tlie ** Works of Art " for which He Claimed Credit — When the Kaiser Tried to Rival Caruso — Official Press Lies About Kaiser — Kaiser's Speedies Full of Platitudes and Ignorant Misquotations 36

Chapter IV

The Savage at Home — Kaiser Sets a Drillmaster to Browbeat His Wife, His Courtiers and Domestics — Servants Threatened With Fists and Sticks— William Ran His House as He Wanted to Run the World — "I Won't Stand Any Nonsense from Any of You '' (Meaning the Nations) — Story About William's Double — Herbert Bismarck Gave the Empress Many Heartaches — Tlie Imperial Court A-tremble — Who the Infamous Eulcnburg Really Was — Kaiser Sponged on Him for Years — ^" The Woman Pays" — A Woman of the Eulenburg Family Paid Cost of Kaiser's Entertainments — One Must Needs Bring Out All the Circumstances to Understand the Baseness of His Character 55

Chapter V

How Kaiser Drove His Mother from House and Home — Desecration in the House of the Dead — Kaiserin a Mere Puppet, Who Thought EverjiJiing William Did W^as Well Done — The Empress Frederick's Scathing Indictment of Her Daughter-in-Law — Wlien the Kaiser Docked His Servants Butter in Order to Save a Few Marks for Pomp and Circumstance — The Kaiserin Lampooned — Disgraceful Familv Jars — A Miniature Kaiser Who Imitated William in the Maltreatment of His Mother— Telltale Statement br Princess Frederick Charles — Kaiser Too Mean to Offer His Old Aunt a Bed— Starving Royal Highnesses, but William Cares Not — Other Kings Avoid Kaiser's Kisses , . 69

CHAPTER^ VI

Appearance of the Empress — Her Hobbies — Kaiser Is Constantly Meddling — The Kaiserin's Vanity — Description of Her Boudoir— Her Pathetic Love for the Kaiser — Glimpses of Daily Life in the Court 86

CONTENTS

Chapter VI Pxge

Unhappy Condition of the Kaiserin — Her Fear of Her Husband — Details of Family Life at Court — William's Lack of Interest in His Children — How He Spent His Days — His Consuming Jealousy of His Wife — His Brutality Toward Her— Court Scenes During the Berlin Riots — The Royal Bedroom — The Kaiser's Imperiousnes9 — How the Kaiserin Played an Unexpected Joke on Him ' 106

Chapter VIII

Enter the Kaiser's Favorites — Four Women Who in Turn Cslptivate His Fancy, and Who, One by One, Were Sent Into Exile by the Jealous Kaiserin — Glimpses of Vulgarity of Court Life 128

Chapter IX

Courtly Manners That Smack of a Cheap Vaudeville Green Room — A Royal " Lady Who Would Be Blackballed in in a Theatrical Boa'rding House — Kaiser Mistakes Friend's House for a Speakeasy — ^Transparent Royal Affections — William's Blood Lust— How He Treats the People Whom He Casts Out of House and Home— The Indian Roval Man-hunter and the Kaiser Imitating Him . . / 149

Chapter X

William's Morbid Restlessness— His Contempt for Others' Comfort— His Passion for Sleeping in Railway Carriages — His Uneasiness at Hoine — His Complaints— About Cost of Family— His Past Regal Extravagance — His Uncontrollable WTiims — The Excuses for Constant Travel Invented — " Alarming " a Peaceful Tov^m — Eating the Royal Danes Out of House and Home — "Castles" I'hat Are Empty Barns 167

Chapter XI

The Kaiser's " Uneasy Head "—His Disdain for " Plebeians " — People Without Handles to Their Name — Glimpses of Royal Society — Diplomacy on a Grand Scale — Intrigue at Home and Abroad — The Kaiser in's Constant Jealousy— His Conversation " Smacked of the Stable " — Some of His Escapades — How the Kaiser Was '* Shadowed" by His Wife — Some Interesting Anonymous Letters and the Facts That Lay Behind Them— A Stingy Lover is the Kaiser — Anonymous Letters Show German Society to Be as Rotten as 'its Royal Master . . .180

CONTENTS CHAPTER XII

PA<3E

The Kaiser's Annual Four Millions Insufficient to Keep Him Out of Debt-^Slow in Paying Bills— Her Majesty Without Income — Constant Wrangles Over Money — Kaiser's Lack of Sense of Money Values a Mental Defect — His Miserliness With Servants — Penuriousness and Extravagance by Turns — Woeful Lack of Business Capacity — German People Refused to Support His Extravagances —The Truth About the Guelph Fund— Kaiser Confiscated the Private Fortune of a Conquered King . .196

Chapter XIII

Organized Meanness at the Prussian Court — The Kaiser Borrows from Servant Girls, and, Besides, Beats Them Out of Their Wages, According to Authenticated Statements of Court Officials — Hungry Chore-vi^omen Haunt the Corridors — No Fires to Warm by, Not a Drop of Hot Water; Wages 60 Cents Per Day for 12 to 14 Hours' Work — Kaiser's Regular Servants Earned $7.50 Per Month — Americans May Well Ponder Kaiser's Salary List — Kaiser Won't Hear of Distress Among His Servants — They Have Not the Right of Petition — Miserliness in Royal Family — Salary List in Kaiser's Household — Wage Earners Obliged to Pay Expenses of Journeys Undertaken for Kaiser 211

Chapter XIV

The Kaiser as a Military Despot — Ridiculous as a General, but a Good Enough Clotheshorse — His Stores, after William Ran Away, Full of Uniforms and "Cits" Clothes— The "Reds" Dressed Up in the Latter, Sold the Uniforms — Why the Army Didn't Care for the Cheating Warlord — Sponging on Army Officers — Kaiser's Foolishness on the Field — Scolding the Empress in Public — Kaiser Drove Officer to Suicide after the Latter Had Whipped Him— When the Kaiser Drank to Forget 225

Chapter XV

The Kaiser and What He Promised to Do to Subjects Opposing His Authority — Would Make the Gutters Run With Citizens' Blood; But, Instead, He Sneaked Off to Holland — ^Wanted His Forty-two Millions of Prussians to Die for Him — Insulted Royalty as Well as Ordinary Folk, but Got Paid Back— Royalty Knew All Along That He Was a Fraud; He Imposed Only on Plain "Cits*'— The French Ambassador in Berlin "Cleans

CONTENTS xi

PAGE

House " in His Own Way, and Tells William So to His Face — From Royal Funeral to Royal Vaudeville — The Kaiser Robs a Fund Intended for Charity to Enrich His Wife's Rich Uncle — Characteristics of the Prussian Junkers — The Kaiser's Mother-in-Law and What She Thinks of Him — Her Highness' Estimate of the "Pig- Dog " and of " Confounded Prussians " — The Duchess' Most Extraordinary Craze — How She Kept the Palace in an Uproar o' Nights 242

Chapter XVI

The War Is the Kaiser's Making — Father and Son Arrange the Murder of an Archduke between Them — General Moltke Was Too "Ladylike" for Little Willy, Who Demanded a Mcfre Hardened Assassin — Passage of Arms between the Two Willies — Kaiser's Thousand-fold Activities When War Was on the Carpet — That Crown-council Dispute — A Theatrical Performance to Order— How "Daisy" Was Dispatched to London to Lure Away Lords Roberts and Kitchener — William Meant to Make Them Prisoners of War in Time of Peace— The Full Story of the Attempted Entrapping— The Imperial Horoscope Predicting His Success in War — The Court During War Times— Responsibility for the War Crime —A Schedule of His Properties 264

Author's Preface

I HAVE been asked how I came to gather the information for this authentic expose of the life of the ex-Kaiser. That is quite a story and I will relate it as briefly as possible.

I happened to be one of four American correspondents at the Coronation of the late Czar Nicholas at Moscow, in the early summer of 1896. At one of the court balls, to which we were bidden. Lord Li, the son of Li Hung Chang, the famous Chinese Viceroy, called the Bismarck of the East, asked me the name of a tall, distinguished looking lady who appeared to be in the suite of Princess Henry of Prussia. Lord Li said his father wanted to know.

Naturally I made haste to find out, and a Russian Chamberlain was good enough to formally introduce me after previously volunteering a short history of the lady. The Baroness von Larisch-Reddem, I learned, had been, for ten years, chief of the Kaiser's household, — that is she had held the most confidential post at the Berlin court, a position that brought her in daily, almost hourly, contact with Wilhelm, the Empress Augusta Victoria, the royal children, the courtiers, and all who \isited the Kaiser's court, royal relatives and native and foreign royalties, distinguished Germans and ditto visitors to Berlin, — in short with everyone worth knowing.

At the time of our meeting at Moscow, the Baroness was Maid of Honor to Princess Henry, a sister of the Czarina, crowned a day before. The Baroness asked me many questions about America, and as, owing to the hubbub around us, it was impossible to talk connectedly, I promised to visit her next afternoon at her lodgings

xiii

XIV

PREFACE in the Kremlin. But by the time I saw her again, her Ladyship, womanlike, had forgotten all about her interests in the States and during our two hours' chat she talked of nobody and nothing but William HohenzoUem.

I had once spent half a day with the Kaiser when acting as^ assistant to Mr. Russel, the famous London photographer, who went to Berlin to take the Kaiser's picture for the Marine exhibition ; as Berlin correspondent for English, French and American newspapers. I had had the Kaiser under less close observation time and again. I had read all the books, magazine and newspaper articles and pamphlets printed about William; I had talked to dozens of people supposed to be in the inner circle of his confidence, masters and mistresses of court gossip; I had a thousand scandals connected with the Berlin court at my fingers' ends — but the sayings of the Baroness took my breath away.

Here, at last, was the real William, the William in dressing gown and pajamas; here was an empress, shorn of state and crown — n mere peevish and petty and entirely womanlike woman. I had thought Russel a great photographer; the Baroness was a better one; I had thought Pepys the most wonderful retailer of small talk, but Madame von Larisch beat the famed chronicler of Charles II's court and times.

" Mercy ! " I cried, " if I had a memory as large as the Sphinx's head, I couldn't remember half of what you said."

" Then I will write it for you," quoth the Baroness.

" All you have told me ? "

" Yes, and a thousand times more."

" But how can I ask for such a sacrifice of time en your part? "

" Oh ! I am not as disinterested as I seem," replied the Baroness, " first of all : I want to let the world know what kind of man William is, and secondly, I want you to do me a service."

PREFACE XV

I would have promised her the town and county of Jerusalem, if she had asked for them, and I certainly made it clear to madame that I would do anything within reason or even a few foolish things, if she insisted.

But what she asked for was quite easy.

" This card," she said, handing me a pasteboard, " will admit you to the banquet of German princes to be held at the Crown chambers to-night. At this gathering you shall act as my reporter, — you shall put down for me everything said and done, no, not those cut and dried speeches court marshals and secretaries concoct, only the impromptu sayings and actions, things not on the program."

" But suppose nothing happens, suppose they act just like junior princes usually do? "

" They won't," said the Baroness, with a sinister emphasis on the last word. " I am sure there will be trouble of some sort, and you will tell me all about it, won't you ? "

" I sure will," I affirmed in true Western style, and when, at 1 o'clock in the morning I was ushered into her Ladyship's parlor a second time, the Russian servant, guarding the threshold of her private rooms, seemed to have expected me, for he rushed off into an inner chamber as soon as he heard my name, and the Baroness followed close upon his heels, dragging an enormous court train, partly detached, after her.

"What has happened," she cried. "My Princess (referring to Princess Henry of Prussia) is in tears, but won't say a word. ' State secrets,' she vows. And the Prince is writing like mad, keeping our whole cypher brigade going full tilt. He is telegraphing to — whom ? "

" To the Kaiser, most likely," I answered her questioning eyes.

" I thought so," cried the Baroness. " Now report, xvi PREFACE

Here is the story I told her; it seemed singularly tame to me at the time :

At the gathering of the German princes, there was much eating, drinking, coughing, gurgling and picking of teeth, nothing remarkable or unusual in that. And the speeches were a continuous flow of platitudes, and imbecilities — the Kaiser had set the fashion in that line, you know. The last official address had been entrusted to a distinguished Russian-German of high position in Moscow society. He spoke in German, but not in the choicest and right at the opening of his speech, he put his foot in it.

" Thrice welcome," he shouted, " to the great German princes that came here in the suite of the Kaiser's brother — — "

He didn't get any further for as he pronounced the word " suite," Prince Louis of Bavaria (the heir to the Crown who subsequently became king) rose heavily and, smashing the table in front of him with his clenched fist, cried, " To the devil with your suite ! We German princes are not traveling in anybody's suite. We came here on our own account to represent our kingdoms, grand duchies and principalities, even as Henry came to represent his brother, the Kaiser. Prince Henry is one of us, but no overlord by any means. As to the Kaiser himself, as royal personages we are his equals in all respects. What do your Royal Highnesses say.? Am I stating the case correctly.? "

Before Louis had half-finished, all the guests, save Henry of Prussia, were on their feet, shouting and gesticulating to show their complete agreement with the royal spokesman of Bavaria.

The turmoil lasted five or six minutes and the banquet was as good as broken up, for the princes were so excited they paid no further attention to the program, talked among tliemselves and drank each other's health in such quick succession that the majority got tipsy. Poor Prince Henry, the innocent cause of the trouble,

PREFACE xvii

sat like a whipped dog, and it was a great relief to him when one of his gentlemen came, bringing him a dispatch. Upon this, he rose abruptly, and bowing all around, hastily left the banquet room.

The Baroness listened with every evidence of excitement. But she didn't seem surprised and my private opinion is that Louis's outburst, aimed at the Kaiser, had been prearranged and that Madame the Baroness was perhaps privy to the plot. As soon as I finished my story, she rose, shook hands with me, thanked me profusely, and said, " I am off to wire the Kaiser. He will have my story hours before Prince Henry's comes limping in. I know the Russian chief censor and I am afraid Henry won't have much luck with his cypher dispatch. First it will have to be deciphered, and then they will take their time thinking whether it should be sent or not."

Next day I met the Baroness by appointment for the third time, and we agreed upon the plan of the book in embryo. As I was due to return to New York within three months, she promised to begin writing at once and by the time I arrived in the States, she would have sent fifty or sixty thousand words to my New York address. That promise her Ladyship faithfully kept and every two weeks afterwards I received further packets of her MS. until I had about one hundred thousand words or more.

I have given you a page of the Baroness's MS. As you perceive, there is not a break or paragraph in it. Neither was there a break or paragraph in the entire one hundred thousand words. That was my greatest trouble: — study out and disentangle sentences and chapters and sections in " the awful German tongue," as Mark Twain put it.

For the rest, I was able to verify nearly every one of the statements made by the chief of the imperial and royal household. Where I failed, the failure was due to the fact that her Ladyship had been the sole eye-

XVlll

PREFACE witness. I made two different trips to Germany to clear up several mysteries in the copy and on these trips gathered much additional evidence as to the Kaiser"'s private life and life at the German court.

Within a week or ten days after the signing of the armistice a courier or King's Messenger attached to one of the minor legations at the Court of St. James, came to see me at my lodgings in London, bringing the first news of the Baroness since July and August, 1914.

" Her Ladyship wants you to know that, while not officially connected with the court, she is a constant visitor at the Schloss and palace and is keeping a close watch on her old master and mistress, and everything and everybody connected with the court. As soon as it will be permissible to send uncensored mail matter from Germany, you will receive a budget of news from her dealing with the Kaiser during the war."

I immediately went to the War Office and inquired when the censorship was likely to be raised.

" It has been decided to raise it on January 6, 1919," I was told.

And the steamship Lapland, on which I had engaged passage after much trouble, was due to sail a day later, January 7th.

So I went to the '■ Legation and told my

troubles to the King's Messenger.

" Don't worry," he said, " I just received orders to go North to-night, I am leaving on a British torpedo boat, and will be back in London before Christmas. When I touch land, I will get the Baroness on the long distance, and if you don't grudge the expense, I will get the information you are after from her own lips."

The courier did even better. While waiting at Copenhagen to return to London, he received a thirty page letter from the Baroness, dated Berlin, December

PREFACE xix

1st, which detailed the news I was so anxious to procure.

According to plan, the courier read Madame von Larisch's statement over several times^ committing it to memory, for his memory is simply phenomenal. So, when his Minister of Foreign Affairs ordered him to show the contents of his mail pouch before departing for London, he cheerfully handed over the Larisch documents, as all papers not strictly appertaining to government business were taboo.

Before embarking for England, the courier called up the house near the Puppenbrucke, Berlin, where the Baroness had a flat. The manager of the apartment house answered the call : " I am sorry to announce," he said, " that her Ladyship is no more. Like so many other good people belonging to the court and society, she was killed a few days ago during the bombardment of the royal stable buildings and the neighborhood of the Schlossr

Further details are missing, but the courier, upon his arrival in London, detailed the contents of Baroness von Larisch's last letter to me, and knowing her copy as I do, it sounded to me as if he were voicing her very own words. " Mine is a phonograph memory," said the courier promptly.

Henry William Fisher.

Chapter I "is It A Fine Boy?"

Victoria

But one person, Major von Normann, of the First Guards, was present, when, on June 15, 1888, at noon scarcely an hour after Emperor Frederick had breathed his last. Kaiser Wilhelm II drew the above dispatch from his father's papers.

" What did His Majesty say on discovering the Queen's telegram? " I asked Normann at the late Emperor's funeral.

" Not a word ; yet he turned a shade paler, while his left hand convulsively closed around the hilt of his saber."

Every time a Prussian king dies, a spirit of unspeakable savagery takes hold of his lawful successor.

The Empress Frederick, her daughters, the memhers of her court, her physician, friends and servants were prisoners for many hours, beginning at five minutes past eleven o'clock on June 15, 1888. Until her son and heir had concluded his investigations and made all arrangements he intended to effect, no living soul was allowed to leave Castle Friedrichskron ; sentinels with loaded rifles stood over the telegraph operators to prevent communication with the outer world, and the telephone was similarly guarded.

That upon the heel of these measures the newlymade Kaiser invited Normann to attend him in his search for state papers and other documents, of which the one mentioned, while not the most valuable, was certainly not the least interesting, shows the extent of his confidence in this man, then esteemed as a strict disciplinarian, but in no other way distinguished.

I would not like to assert that the imperial proclamations to the army and navy, dated June 15, 1888, were composed with von Normann's assistance while impatient crowds surrounded the palace, demanding news of the King whom they vaguely supposed to be dead; — but these papers are so full of barrack bravado and contempt for everything not military as to strongly suggest some such influence.

" Thus we belong to each other, — I and the army, — thus we were born for each other, and thus we will stick to each other forever, be there peace or storm, as God wills it."

And while the army was honored and exalted, the loyal taxpayers had to wait for the customary royal greeting and a word of information on the issues of the day, until the 18th of the month.

But to return to Queen Victoria's telegram.

It was dated January 28, 1859, twenty-four hours after the eldest son of Crown Prince and Crown Princess Frederick- William had seen the light.

William was born quite economically, a midwife receiving him, and a court physician, assisted by the then highly-reputed Berlin specialist for woman's diseases, the late Dr. Martin, looking gravely on after the manner of his kind.

In Germany, you must know, a doctor thinks is beneath himself to take the child, and is supposed to act only in case grave complications arise; nine times out of ten he contents himself by superintending the arrangements and in seeing that the sanitary laws are complied with in all minuteness ; the midwife does the work.

In the case of the Crown Princess of Prussia, a Miss Stahl acted as midwife ; at the time of this writing she was a motherly woman, and still continued her visits to the palace; so I often had occasion to talk with her about the great event in her life.

" Her poor Royal Highness," said the old woman, " was only two months past eighteen years, and very weak and nervous. You see, with her it was not an ordinary case of first motherhood; politics were mixed up in it to a frightful degree, and the poor young thing felt the fate of Europe trembling in her lap, for our King Frederick William IV was as crazy as a March hare, and twenty-one years had passed since a midwife was called to the Prince Regent's house to bring into the world little Louise, now Grand Duchess of Baden.

" Our work had been divided as follows. Dr. Martin was to have special care of Her Royal Highness, inasmuch as he was treating her for a nervous malady ; the court physician had his ordinary duties, while I was commanded to take the child. But the moment the little one was born a despairing moan from the mother overthrew all these fine dispositions.

" ' The Crown Princess is dying,' whispered the doctors, while working with blanched faces over Victoria's prostrate body. Of course, I had to abandon the child momentarily to help them, and when — the Crown Princess having revived after a while — -I knelt down before the couch on which our heir rested, imagine my fright: he had not yet uttered a cry, nor did he move a muscle. ' Still-born, by Heaven ! ' I thought. A gesture brought Dr. Martin to my side, and together we labored over the newly-born, I do not know how long, exhausting successively every means ordained by medical books, or practiced in the nursery, to bring the child to life."

I will state here, that Miss Stahl was a very dignified woman, broad and short, and of an excessively grumpy disposition.'"Very seldom did she smile. The old dame ^recounted her story to this point, given always with the dignity becoming to a person of her worth ; but, as she continued, her face broadened with merriment, and her famous basso resounded through the room with a break here and there that came very near a laugh.

" When everything had been done that in decency could be done," so ran her narrative, " I took that royal youngster under my left arm, and, grabbing a wet towel in my riglit hand, began to belabor him in good, homely fashion, though the doctors groaned and everybody in the room looked horrified.

" ' To the devil with etiquette,' I thought, seeing their grimaces ; ' this is a matter of life or death.' So I spanked away, now lighter, now harder, slap, slap, slap until — the cannons announcing the birth had half-finished their official quota of a hundred and one shots — until at last a faint cry broke from the young one's lips.

" He was alive ! I had snatched our Prince from the grave for which he seemed destined. The rest was easy sailing; the doctors again had their innings and the simple midwife was shoved aside."

" But what about the deformed hand and arm ? "

" That was discovered only the third or fourth day after," replied Miss Stahl ; " you see, at first we were all so busy keeping life in the Prince, after I put it there, that no one thought of examining his limbs. Even when, on January 28, the late Crown Prince showed his son to his relatives, friends and the household no one observed that anything was wrong. But on the last, or the last but one day of the month, it was noticed that the child did not move his left arm; an investigation was made, and, in the course of it, the surgeons discovered that the elbow joint was dislocated. That is nothing serious in a healthy child. However, in the case of our Prince, the surrounding soft parts were so injured, and the muscles attached in such a condition, that no one dared attempt to set the bone then and there as should be done in all cases."

Miss Stahl concluded her remarks with the statement : " I am well aware that the present condition of the Kaiser's arm is attributed to a mistake made by the persons officiating at the birth; but," and sayings this, the old maid's face assumed its most determined look, " if that were not a falsehood, agreeable to the Kaiser, do you suppose for one moment that I should be in this palace now to cripple more Hohenzollerns ? " Saying this Miss Stahl used to bring down her fist forcibly and concluded : " My opinion has always been that the child's left forearm was not properly made up by nature, as, indeed, his whole left side was weak, and is weak to this day.