GERMAN CROWN PRINCE.

Taihape Daily Times, 25 March 1918, Page 3

GERMAN CROWN PRINCE.

TALKS WITH BRITISH WOUNDED "I hope to go to Canada after the war, but 'won't throw stones at me will you?" Thus the German Crown Prince addressed a little knot of twelve wounded British officers waiting at Aix-la-Chapelle Station for a train to convey them to Holland and home (says the "Daily Mail" correspondent at Rotterdam.) One of them is a Canadian Flying Corps officer, and the Crown Prince was talking to him about Canada. The reply was characteristic. "We are sportsmen in Canada." It appeared to be unexpected, for the Crown Prince turned it off by saying, "Yes, I believe you like winter sports." To a South African the Crown Prince said, "You shouldn't have come into the war at all."

Talking to a blind private the Crown Prince said, "What are you going to do after the war?" The answer came promptly, "Grind a barrel organ!"

The Crown Prince had come to Aix doubtless to meet German wounded repatriated from Great Britain. He was accompanied by three staff officers and was dressed very inconspicuously in an ordinary field grey cloak with a fur collar and a cap with a narrow red band. He seemed rather nervous and held each officer's hand while he spoke to him. He asked Flying Corps officers where they were brought down and when, and spoke sympathetically of the number of British wounded lying on stretchers in a hospital shed. His aide-de-camp presented the twelve officers at dinner with a box of his well-known favourite cigarettes —very long ones with mouthpieces, and called "Kronprinz Wilhelm," after himself. The box had on the lid a picture of himself in the uniform of the Death's Head Hussars. Subsequently the officers drew lots for the box, which fell to a flight lieutenant.