"MY FIRST CLIMPSE OF THE KAISER.

Taihape Daily Times, 10 April 1919, Page 5

"MY FIRST CLIMPSE OF THE KAISER.

FATE OF ENGLISHMAN WHO CHEERED THE WAE LORD.

Few Englishmen surely can .claim to have cheered the Kaiser in the streets of Berlin or. the eve of war!

Yet Mr J. R. Halpin. a London cyclist, can certainly claim to have done so. But he soon discovered his

mistake_. and during four weary years in internment camp and prison cursed the War Lord so heartily as to efface all traces of his previous "little lapse."

Mr Halpin, who lias just been repatriated, told a "Weekly Despatch*' representative that he left Tottenham Court Road on June 24. 1914. on a "cycling stunt.'* a lour from London to Moscow and back, for a famous

firm of cycle manufacturers. Crossing the Channel to Boulogne he took the Calais-Dunkirk read. and. passing passing through Bruges, Ghent, and Alost, he reached the German frontier. In Belgium there was at least no

outward sign of the groat conflagration which was to lis;!'.!- up Europe from end to ond. and it was not until he reached Wi.ttcn and Bielefeld in the third week of July that he heard anv

rumours of war. Even then only war with Russia was hinted at . and Mr Halpin, thinking that would not concern him. proceeded serenely on his way.

At Krupps, at Essen, however, he wajs very coldly received, and was actually detained as a spy for some hours. But this did not trouble him greatly and he continued his travels to Berlin, which he reached without further serious, adventure on July 29. The city was then seething with excitement, and (the Unter dor Linden was packed with an excited crowd. After visiting the offices of Messrs Cook and Sen, Mr Halpin mingled with the crowd, and was surprised to see hundreds- pressing round a car containing an individual in a large brass helmet. "I thought it was a fireman at first," Mr Hailpin said, "hut I found that it was the great War Lord in full "-nr paint. A vast vo&r went up from the oxcite-d people, and I roared with the rost without knowing wint I was iearing for. "