WONDERFUL VERIFIED FORECAST.

Taihape Daily Times, 13 May 1918, Page 5

WONDERFUL VERIFIED FORECAST.

Many years before the war, one of the best-known authorities on European affairs was an Anglo-American i correspondent, Harold Frederic. He Tvas for some time a special correspon. dent in Berlin, and here is what he wrote just 29 years ago to the New York Times concerning Wilhehn of Hohenzollern, the mad dog of Europe, who to-day has the world by the throat: "Apparently all the women—at least, all the English women —who have had to do with the bringing up of Prince William hold him in horror and detestation. I have had numerous proofs of tbis, although I have never been able to fasten upon any specific reason for it. Their dislike for him is based on a general conception of his character. This view is that he is utterly cold, entirely selfish, wantonly cruel; a young man without conscience or compassion or any softening virtues whatever. That he has great abilities they all admit; but tbey stop there. Heart he has none, upon their reckoning:" But bere i p where Harold Frederic in the light of what has happened since 1914, ac tually assumed the role of the true that some future Talne, a hence .perhaps, will write to show that Wilhelm ll.' of Prussia was a mysterious belated survival 1 -of the antemediaeval Goths and Vandals—an 'Attilla born a thousand and more years after his time." How terribly true was that 1888 reading of the character of-Wilhelm of Hohenzollern as he has made history during the 1914-18 neHod of his reign.