EX-KAISER’S FORTUNE.
ENORMOUS VALUE.
BITTER SOCIALIST ATTACK.
From Our Special Correspondent. Berlin, Tuesday Night.
To-day a favourable opportunity was offered of testing the significance of the Kaiser as a factor in the German political problem. It was the first reading debate in the Prussian Parliament on a bill confirming a business settlement arranged between the Government and the House of Hohenzollern. The measure was a surprise, and has become an apple of discord. Till it was published few Germans had any idea of the immensity of their late ruler’s possessions. His fortune, it appeared, was to be reckoned not merely in millions, but in milliards, of marks. The palaces, mansions, opera houses, and theatres to which he renounces all claims number altogether some fifty. Those which are recognised as the absolute private property of himself and his family fall under thirty-nine different headings, and some of these comprise fifteen or twenty dwelling-houses each. From this fact alone it will be apparent that, under the agreement, Wilhelm II would be left an exceedingly rich man and the lord of many acres.
As soon as the contract appeared it was sharply attacked. Of course, the Independent Socialists led the assault. For them, the agreement was the best possible propaganda. Why, they asked, should the fugitive monarch be allowed to retain so much of the wealth wrung by himself and his ancestors from the nation they had led to destruction? By what right did he keep for himself dozens of dwelling-houses, when hundreds of thousands of his deluded and misused subjects were prevented, in consequence of his acts, from finding a place where they could lay their heads? The cry proved so seductive that the Majority Socialists decided to follow suit. They are so rapidly losing the ground of popular support from under their feet that they could not afford to leave the exploitation of this firstclass grievance entirely to the Independents. Though one of their own number, the Prussian Finance Minister, Herr Suedekum, had negotiated and signed the agreement with the Kaiser’s representative, they decided that it must be repudiated. That meant the practical certainty of a Cabinet crisis in Prussia, and this, in itself, might have been expected to invest to-day’s sitting of the Chamber with unusual interest.
“AN INFORMAL TRIAL.”
But there was much more at stake than the fate of the Prussian Minister. It was obvious that the debate must necessarily resolve itself into an informal trial of the Kaiser and a review of his alleged merits and demerits, and that it would be a capital opportunity for those who had anything to say for or against him to utter their opinions. If he had really been a living element in the political situation here and the object of vital popular interest there would have been a rush to the Prinz Albrechtstrasse to be present at the fray. But what were the facts? When I entered the Chamber Herr Suedekum had finished his brief introductory statement, and the Majority Socialist Graefe was well embarked on a violent and bitter attack against the dethroned monarch. From a third to a quarter of the deputies lolled listlessly in their places. The galleries for the general public were not half filled, while those for privileged guests were almost completely empty. A dozen or so reporters nodded drowsily over their notebooks. The scene reminded one of that presented by the old Prussian Diet when discussing a bill for the construction of a third-rate canal or for the readjustment of a boundary between two parishes. It was only too clear that the subject of the debate did not touch very closely either the hopes or fears of any considerable section of the people.
And what storms of indignant protest Herr Graefe’s speech would have aroused if he had ventured to deliver it on that spot before the war. He ran relentlessly through Wilhelm’s chronicle of sin. The long catalogue included the Kruger telegram, The Daily Telegraph interview, the “Willy-nicky” letters, the marginal notes to the Kautsky documents, the claim to the admiralship of the Atlantic, the Hun speech to the troops embarking for the Boxer expeditions and the instruction to German soldiers that, if such motion were necessary to protect him, their Kaiser, they must be prepared to shoot down without hesitation even their own fathers and mothers. Herr Graefe compared the Kaiser with a fraudulent managing director of a bankrupt concern, who escapes the legal consequences of his laches by flight, and demands that the capital which he put into the business should be sent after him. The Crown Prince he dismissed as “a young man who had a great predilection for the fair sex, and who had taken out a patent for cuff-links.” That, said Herr Graefe, was the beginning and the end of his services for the Fatherland. It was urged, he continued, that the Kaiser had a large family to provide for, but why need he provide for them? His six sons were strong, healthy young men, who could work and should work. The nation had always been told that each of the Hohenzollern Princes had to learn a handicraft. Well, now was a very favourable chance for them to exercise their skill, and they could, at any rate, congratulate themselves on being the only family of its size in the country which had not lost a single member in the war.
All this, and much more, the Conservatives listened to with indifference, if not apathy. It was only the more stinging of Herr Graefe’s points that had any audible reaction upon them. All in all, the debate went far to strengthen the idea that Wilhelm of Hohenzollern has very few real friends in this country, and is not likely to have any further serious influence on its destinies.