KAISER A CANADIAN LANDLORD

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 119, 13 February 1919, Page 6

KAISER A CANADIAN LANDLORD

GOVERNMENT LANDS PURCHASED BY HIS AGENTS.'

~c . \ Jos Smith, writing in the "Daily Mail, asks:—'

What is Canada going to do with regard to the extensive land holdings acquired by the ex-Kaiser through his agents on the Pacific Coast of Canada? . Duriiur the years immediately preceding the war, personal friends of the ivniser were hard at work in British Columbia, partly in the now familiar processes of "peaceful penetration," partly on the privato behalf of their imperial master and friend,, perhaps with a view lo the possibility of such a contingency as the present. In those days the Junker class had established a firm foothold in the British Columbian capital. ,: The Counts Alvo and Bodo von Alvensleben, members of a family of undeniable Almnnach de Gotta'' standing, were conspicuous alike in social and business circles. Their real estate concern in Lort Street.was one of the largest in the province, and the holdings of the nrm included extensive water frontages which would no doubt have been extremely useful to raiding German cruisers nnd submarines had they succeeded in extending their activities to the North Pacific.

fhe .birthday of the All Highest was celebrated in the usual fashion at the Kaisorhof Restaurant—the rendezrous of the Victorian junkers on such occasions r with plenty of speechifying and drinking.- .

But the Alvensleken activities did not stop at such frivolities. Circumstances enabled me, during a connection' with a Government Department, to obtain an interesting insight, in the light of later events, into the. ramifications of the German system of penetration. So recently as the latter part of 1913 they were buying, up large tracts of Government lands both on the mainland and on Vancouver Island, the applications for purchases being made in the names of clerks and employees of the firm. I have s&n as many as twenty such applications made at one time to the Provincial Lands Department, and though at the time they might appear bona fide enough, the fact has now been pretty solidly established that the whole transaction ought to have been in one name alone—that of William Hohenzollern.

On the outbreak of war the Counts Alvo and, Bodo withdrew themselves their aristocratic, duel-scarred, and dissipated countenances, and their underhand activities (which included (lie fomenting of trouble on the question of Tndian immigration into British Colum bia).into the State of Washington, whence they no doubt hoped to keen an eye on their interests and intrigue's in their, late headquarters. It is not known what lias become of them since America came into the war, but it is to be hoped that their powers for mischief are 'at an end.

In any case, it is certain that the "whole of the Alvenslebeii transnetions will be thoroughly investigated (o their source, and that Canada will not "stand for" any dealings with the ex-Kaiser or his friends.