EX-KAISER DEAD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 June 1941, Page 5

EX-KAISER DEAD

AFTER OVER TWENTY YEARS OF EXILE ANNOUNCEMENT IN GERMANY. BURIAL TO TAKE PLACE AT DOORN. illy Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, June .4. It is announced in Germany that the ex-Kaiser died this morning. He was 82 years of age and was a grandson of Queen Victoria. He is to be buried at Doorn. Ex-Kaiser Wilhelm 11., former German Emperor and King of Prussia, was born on January 27. 1859. The great victories over Austria and France, the founding of a new German Empire, and the winning of the German Crown by the Hohenzollerns, were the dominating impressions of his boyhood. He served in the first regiment of the Guards and studied constitutional law and political economy in the University of Bonn. He came to the throne in 1888. He clashed with Bismarck, who resigned in 1890, and the Kaiser announced that he would take over command of the ship of State himself.

As ruler of Germany, the Kaiser concentrated on strengthening the German Army and Navy and made many boastful and belligerent utterances. During the Great War he was increasingly reduced to the position of a mere onlooker, though he agreed only with reluctance and under pressure of emergency to make Hindenburg Com-mander-in-Chief, and leave the real decisions to him and to Ludendorff. The German fleet's inaction in the first years of the war was attributed to the Emperor’s wish, involving him in a sharp difference with Admiral von Tirpitz. In near defeat, he let himself be persuaded by the popular discontent to appoint Prince Max of Baden Imperial Chancellor in October. 1918. Later when President Wilson showed that he considered the person of the Emperor to be a real obstacle to the conclusion of peace. Prince Max. with a Reichstag majority, called on the Emperor to abdicate, a step that was not at first thought to involve the removal of the Hohenzollern dynasty. After the outbreak of the revolution in November, 1918, Prince Max proclaimed that both the Emperor and the Crown Prince would renounce their claims to the throne and a Regency would be formed. The victorious Socialist Party, however, no longer satisfied with the concessions, proclaimed a Republic. William 11. stole quietlj' from his former Empire and escaped to Holland on November 10. He was interned in neutral Holland and was given as a residence the castle of Doorn, where he had been ever since.