Edgar Wallace Visits Ex-Crown Prince

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 968, 10 May 1930, Page 18

Edgar Wallace Visits Ex-Crown Prince

■ F you are a public man and you wear your hair brushed back from your forehead, nothing is more certain than that the caricaturist will draw you with a forehead that slopes back to a point of imbecility. The man who received me in the charming ante-room of a beautiful private house somewhere near the Tiergarteu has grey hair dressed this way He has a high forehead, keen, intelligent eyes with a peculiar and at tractive expression, a strong, keen, clean-shaven face, and the slim figure of a boy. ' Under his white dress tie was the blue cross of the Order Pour le Merite with a broad black and white ribbon. On his dress coat one star glittered—l imagine it was the Black Eagle—and beneath that an Iron Cross. Likes English Plays He greeted me in well-nigh perfect English. He looks at you straightly, inquiringly; he is very ready to smile: he has a sense of humour. Skilful propaganda has carieatureu him so effectively that it comes almost as a shock to find —far from ail those caricatures —how simple and human a man he is. You see him oc casionally in Berlin, at the theatre and sport. “I saw 'Journey’s End' four times The man who wrote that knows his front line! The friendliness, the bru tality of it! I have seen Shaw’s play four times. We call it the ‘Kaiser von Amerika’; in England it is called ‘The Apple Cart,’ isn’t it? Shaw is really wonderful! He would be the first to admit it.”

I talked very sketchily about the war, more fully about Germany and its future, of politics not at all. “1 get a certain amount of amusement out of reading journalistic com-

Amused at Newspaper Comments About Himself . . . “No One was more Anxious to Avoid War than I” . . . Never Doubt* ed Military Value of Great Britain ... ~

meuts about myself published during the war, and especially in reading those pseudo-historical works the authors of which are so convinced of iheir profound knowledge of the psychology of war generals! 1 “One day I am a malignant com- ; mander directing the destruction of | cathedrals, the next day I am the mer- ' est figure-head with no active control, but holding a command in an army because 1 am the heir of an emperor In one newspaper I am living in luxury beyond the reach of guns and bombing airplanes, my life one satur nalia aftei another; in another I am behind the front line directing opera tions. This paper makes me a figure of fun, that one a vicious ogre. “In one book the war was made Decause the Emperor feared my con temptuous smile If he did not go for ward! i sit in the Reichstag listen ing to the debates with that same con temptuous smile. I am intriguing on the eve of war—a German Machiavelli —manoeuvring Austria into a position from which she cannot recede. “The truth is—aud it is so well known In Germany that what I say will sound trite to German ears —that scarcely one man in Germany was more anxious to avoid war than I, and nobody was quite so helpless to prevent it.” He lit a thin cigarette with a tiny straw mouthpiece. “Propaganda! Sometimes a deadly, insidious weapon. It changes the very character and appearance of a man, supplies him with motives of which he has never dreamt, turns his most innocent amusements into vices, creates around him a poisoned atmosphere. 1 once saw a so-called authentic' drawing of me sitting at a table surrounded by empty chain pagne bottles —it was entirely Imagin ary, for I drink very little and never in the daytime.” , He laughed; he has a very Infectious laugh; one finds oneself smiling in sympathy. He is singularly well read, reads every book on social problems that is written in English or German. He has always been a good mixer. The members of the regimental messes who met him in India will testify to this. The time in India is, by the way, a very pleasant memory for him. “What good boys they were, those English soldiers I met day after day! And how perfectly splendid they were to me! I returned from India a pronounced admirer of England. I have always been very fond of the late King Edward, who was always very

Edgar Wallace > kind to me. and Invited me over set. eral times. I spent some tlm e Scotland. What a beautiful ccmatrr —one of the most lovely in Europe* The Englishman who admits hi doesn’t know Scotland should t* ashamed of himself. 1 want to go to England one day. and my pleisaiy at being there will compensate for the fact that this time I go there as a private citizen. “I never had any illusions about England .after she came into the war 1 know the character of her people When one of our generals doubted tlie military value of the nation. 1 predicted exactly the number tint Great Britain and her dependencies would put into the field.” Fond of King Edward He talked for a long time of tbs personal losses he had sustained. "Most of my best friends were killed in the first years of the war That is the horrible experience of every country. So many of the best men of the nation go out in the first battles. Some of the sights I saw I shall never forget. NiveUe's attack in 1917 was one of them. So many French soldiers died before the line held by my army on the Chemin des Dames.” He told me that it was very rarely that he had British troops on hia front. The British were farther north. All connections between the Ger. man and other princely families were broken off during the war and have never been resumed. “I never realised how odd the situ» tiOD was until the illness of King George. You were in Germany a; the time —l believe 1 beard you were —and you know how impressed were all classes of the German people, and how hourly bulletins were issued u they were published In London 1 was, as I say, very fond of King Edward. King George I have unfortunately net only rarely. Daring ills severe tllnens I wanted to write, expressing my concern and sympathy, but there was nobody to whom I could write so that my sympathy would be comprehended.”