Manawatu Evening Standard. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1938 EX-KAISER’S ECLIPSE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 54, 1 February 1938, Page 6

Manawatu Evening Standard. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1938 EX-KAISER’S ECLIPSE.

Another birthday has been celebrated by the former ruler of Germany in his retreat at Doom —the twentieth since his memorable flight into Holland when his troops rose against him as the Great War drew to its close and he was forced to abdicate the throne. The festivities strike a new note, too, on this occasion. In the earlier years of his life at Doom the deposed Kaiser did not once lose hope that his people would recall him again to the Holienzollern throne, but as the years sped by he was fated to become a disappointed man. The last barrier then existing against his return to Germany as an ordinary citizen was removed in 1932, but there was no call such as he had awaited from the nation. Early in 1933 it was reported that he had made a sudden decision to depart for Berlin, but almost immediately postponed the journey. The elections were then pending, and it was presumably on the personal plea of Herr Hitler that the return was not made, the former Kaiser being convinced that the Nazis would send him the message he awaited. Again he was fated to be disappointed for Hitlerism soon showed it had nothing in common with monarchism, and his 75th birthday, celebrated in the following year, found him expressing regret that the Nazis were against the monarchy. Now four years later the man who was once the “wealthiest German,” feeling the weight of years, and divested of all his majesty, is wholly reconciled to spending all his days at Doom, and much as lie would like to finally rest beside his first wife at Potsdam desires his mausoleum to be in the grounds of his present home. The world, however, cares but little for him who was once the proud German Emperor. He has passed long since from the stage whereon he strutted in majesty and is to-day a vanquished, obscure figure. On past birthdays he received messages from many parts of the world; there is no mention of them in 1938. In the earlier years of his exile he found enjoyment in cutting wood, and many of Doom’s poor people received a bundle on the former Kaiser’s birthday. Now the infirmities of old age are creeping steadily forward and the sound of the axe does not ring so frequently, if at all. Nor do we hear of gifts of trees for his garden. If the truth be told the exKaiser is a lonely man in exile, however much he may enjoy the

pleasure of his family’s company and the now rarer visits of former members of the Prussian nobility. He is lonely without the glamour of his former brilliance as the German Emperor. Historians, too< have coldly assessed his part in the Great War, which he could have prevented, with only negligible interest, and the story of his pre-war struttings, of triumphal tours, and of bellicose speeches is old, stale, and unprofitable. As a commentator says, the man who was admired, hated, courted in Europe in the early years of the century, is now relegated by historians to a place unimportant in the annals of the Great War and very inconsiderable from the conceptions of the people. Once there were insistent demands that the man regarded as the arch-villain of 1914 should be brought to trial and even hanged for the crimes committed by his commanders. All that is changed and the world does not care a straw for William Holienzollern. He has tried his hand at painting, poetry, musicianship, and lately at archaeology, but with little success. How as an old man in the evening of his life he apparently wishes for nothing more than quiet days in the seclusion of Doom, far from the troubles of a world which his lust for power very largely created.