REVELATIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 January 1918, Page 7

REVELATIONS.

SECRETS OF THE KAISER'S " SOLICITOR An American who for ten years was the manager of the Dernburgs, tTie Kaiser's solicitors in Berlin, supplies Pearson's Weekly with the following revelations: — The Dernburgs, f.hough by no means the largest firm of solicitors in Berlin, have certainly tJio most distinguished clientele. The Dernburgs do no commercial business —all their clients are wealthy people of high position. Among them are the Kaiser and most German royalties. I entered the employ of the Dernburgs twenty-three years ago. I had previously acted as private secretary to a Baron Elsnr, who had engaged me in that capacity when he was in Xew York. I was then only just twenty. The Baron was a client of the Dernburgs and on his death, (wo years after I had come to Germany, I got the offer of n clerkship in the Dernburgs' firm. Tim> years later I became their managing c'.i.l;. a position I held until I left Germany in IAIS. Baron Fredrichs, one of the most intimate friends of the Kaiser (they were at Bonn University together) was a client of ourz. THE KAISER'S LETTERS j The Baron went to live in England in 1907, and stayed there until 1913, when he went to Athens. Before going to Athens lie deposited with us a number of his papers, which included several letters the Kaiser had written to him whilst he was in England. These letters were of the most intimate kind and some passages in them were rather amusing. The Kaiser referred to some lady of the Court that Prince Eilel, ( : the Emperor's second son) was supposed to be in love with. '"I do not attach any importance to this affair of Eitel's," wrote the Kaiser. ''Augusta Keyserlingk is too thin for Eitel, I know his taste Like myself, his admiration is alitor plump ladies." In another letter the Kaiser made a rather funny confession about a box of cigars. "Zeppelin made me a present of .'.nn cigars the other day," he wrote. "I guessed they were a lot that the Count had picked up cheap. I tried a couple to make sure and then sent the lot to Tino—iic does not know what a, good cigar is." Writing to the Baron the Kaiser made a statement about von Tirpitz that got the Emperor into trouble. This was in 1908 The letter referred to some Admiralty contracts, about which there had been a good deal of talk in official circles; he is rather hard up; as we know. However, all the trouble and talk has arisen because Tirpitz won't allow anybody under him to follow his example. That is an advantage. One rogue takes less than half a dozen." TIRPITZ GETS ANNOYED. A friend of the German Admiral saw this letter and told von Tirpitz of it. The latter promptly placed his resignation in the hands of the Emperor, and at the same time he announced his intention of petitioning the Reichstag to allow him to bring an action for libel against the Kaiser. The Kaiser had to write a let-, ter to von Tirpitz, unreservedly withdrawing the charge he had made against jiim in the letter to Fredrichs. Speaking of the iiifident to Albert Dernburg, the chief of the Dernburgs, tilic Kaiser said:— "I don't blame Tirpitz. He is a rogue, of course, but he has done splendid work, and ho must keep up his reputation for incorruptibility. 1 blame that fool Fredrichs for alln.ving anyone to see my letter." The Kaiser refused to see or write to his friend for about six months, when he apparently began corresponding again with him. From time to time we used to get bills to pay on behalf of the. Kaiser and various other members of the Hohenzollern family. It is the custom among most German royalties to allow a vast quantity of personal debts to accumulate and then hand them over to their solicitors to discharge. Among one sheaf of bills handed to us to pay for the Kaiser were the following:—£l 7s 6d for a Persian cat, £1 lis 3d to a palmist and £2 for a punching ball. We paid a bill of £ls 15s for the account of the Crown Prince to a juggler for lessons in juggling. . A bill we discharged from time to time for the Kaiser was one to a barber for "ointments, hajreutting, and moustache dressing." One barber patronised by the Kaiser lost the Imperial custom for dressing the Emperor's moustache too roughly. Captain von Krai Fellodeken, one of the Kaiser's private secretaries, wrote on the barber's hill: "Your rougihness lately in dressing the Emperor's moustaeho has greatly annoyed ,his Majesty. You will not be employed any further by his Majesty." THE KAISER'S VATN HOPE. We frequently paid bills to an English Press cutting agency, from whom the Kaiser obtained cuttings of refer-' ence to himself and other people in whom he was interested in the English Press. The Kaiser received from this agency a large number of cuttings about himself published during the period he was in England at the time of King Edward'! funeral. Among them were several photographs of the Kaiser riding next to King George One of these pleased the Kaiser particularly. and he subsequently purchased one hundred copies of the photograph and gave a number of them away to his personal friends. He haFone framed and hung up in his personal smokingroom at the Neues Palais. Captair. Velterman, au equerry, told me that once the Kaiser, after looking attentively at this photograph, turned and said to him suddenly: "Veltherman some day I may ho riding through London like that, but not as a guest." Then he stopped and, after a pause, added, ''As a conqueror." PRESS CUTTING MANIA. Velterman told ;n 0 that when any prominent English people staved in Germany, whether as guests at the German Court or not, the Kaiser always had cuttings from the English Press about them sent to him after they returned. When Mr. Winston Churchill went back from the German Army .manoeuvres some years before the war,'the Kaiser received and re!U f carefully over 1200 Enslish cuttings referring 'to Mr. Churchill's visit.

We had the settling of a number of claims against the Kaiser, the Crown Prince and offer members of the Hohenzollern family, by various people, in addition to the ordinary creditors. An officer in the Prussian Guards, a Captain Frankerst, made a rather remarkable claim against the Crown Prince a few months before the war. Tite

Prince was. a giiesl atoa smiUi.jtitaiei' party given by Captain Franker-st at Lite latter's handsome Hat. in Berlin. OBOWX PRIXCE THIES JUGGLING. There were some hall dozen other guests, and they all seem to have, followed the Prince's example, and drank rather too much wine. Alter dinner the Crown Prince, who prides himself on being a clever juggler, took up a couple of vases from a table in his host's drawingroom, and said lie would juggle with them. According to the captain's own statement, lie said to the Prince: "Don't forget, fir, that you will be juggling will a couple of thousand poundi' worth." The Prince laughed and said: "The bigger tho money, the bigger the risk and fun." Then he began juggling with the vases and dropped one of them almost at once. The vase was smashed to pieces. The captain subsequently demanded £2OOO from the Prince, for he declared that that was the value put on the vases as a pair by an expert. The breakage of one of the pair destroyed the value of the two. The Prince, in reply to this demand, wrote a bantering letter to the Captain, saying that though it ought to.be well worth the Captain's while to. lose £2OOO for tlTe privilege of getting tne Crown Prince to juggle before him and his guests, he would consent to him £IOO for the broken vase. Ultimately the Prince agreed to pay £IOOO, wh,ich the Captain accepted. Freidrich Dernburg went to see the Prince on the matter. The Prince treated the whole affair as a joke, and even when, he finally was compelled to consent to paying the Captain £IOOO, he said to Dernburg: ''You should have seen the face of the Captain's wife when I took up the vases. I never saw anyone loolc so horrified in my life. I was nearly choked with, laughter, and that is why I dropped the vase." Prince Eitel, by the way, brought us a client, who just now is a-very, conspicuous figure in Germany. This was von Klein, tho man who is organising the air raids on England and whp led the second raid on London.

SOLD ESTATES ON GERMAN FRONTIER. Von Klein promises to become quite as popular a personage in Germany as was Count Zeppelin. He knows London very well—he stayed there frequently and appeared to be very familiar with those smart night and supper elu|)s that were springing up in London just before the war. He told mc that at one of the best known of these clubs they had as manager a man who was in the German Secret Service, who wore on the inside of his waistcoat some decoration the Kiiiscr had conferred on him! Von Klein, by the way, instructed us early in 1914 to sell a. small estate he had"on the Rhine. He told me he was doing this because he regarded a European war as inevitable, and then when it broke out property near the German frontier would slump badly. As a matter of fact, all the -big owners of on the Rhine frontier later on tried to sell their estates, hut buyers after May, 1914, -were not to be found. The Crown Prince, Prince Leopold of Prussia, Prince Auguste Wilhclm, and Prince Henry of Prussia, who were the members of the Hohenzollern family who had estates on the Rhine frontier, all sold them in 1913.