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IS THE KAISER MADE?
SOME NEW FACTS.
G. Ward Price, writing from Spa, in
the "Daily Mail," says: -
That the ex-Kaiser is, made and has
been so for years, is the sincere belief of the
Kpciel people of Spa, whose unwelcome
toiviisnian he was for many months before
the day he signed his abdication on
the very table so they say in the Hotel
Britannique, at which the bones of the
Brtish Peace Delegation are now taking
their meals.
There is a butcher in the main street
of Spa who was, walking through the
woods one Sunday off for noon in the summer
of 1918, and came suddenly upon a
fleshy, elderly man in his shirt sleeves, I
with bare arms, and a pick in his hand, I
who, in company with others' similarly
dressed and equipped, was occupied in
turning a little stream from its, course
with all the eagerness of a child making
sand castles on the bench.
'J'ho butcher stared in surprise at
the se- elderly mudlark, for it never occurred
to him that one of them was the
German Emperor and two of the others
were a famous general and Prince Mot
toniiSh. ¡iuildenlv he was addressed with
an imbecile affectation of dignity by one
of the grubby dishers.
"Bonjour, monsieur. Take off your
hat. You are in the presence of the
Emperor of the World. And now," added
the Kaiser, as the startled butcher
sheepishly complied, "go.' and forget. for
ever what you have seen." "j
As another hobby of his stay at Spa,
when the German communiques were
constantly assuring the troops that their
Sifpreiuo War Lord was personally present
fit their battles, the Kaiser used to
stuff his pockets with leaves or with
pebbles which he would throw into the i
ear as: he walked. I
He sent for a German woman friend to ]
join. him in Spa. Quarters were provided I
for her in the Villa "Poiupeia. She was
tall, handsome, and between thirty and J
thirty-five, years of age. "The Emperor's !
Spy," was, Ula nickname the towns- people
gave her.
She would disappear whenever the Empress
fame to visit her husband al Spy,
but, at other times the Kaiser would go I
out) riding with her in the woods that
surround the town. One of his orders
was that all the branches overhanging
the' paths through the woods should be
topped oh" so that he should not need to
hold his head as he cantered along. And
far and wide every day the forests round
Spa were searched by Secret Service men
to ensure his safety.
Though Allied aeroplanes never bomb-
ed German General Headquarters here,
the great dread of the Kaiser's. life, was
air raids. He had three villas reserved
for himself in Spain and was continually
changing from one to the other. At-the
Villa Neubois. where Marshal Foch and
M. Millerand have been staying, the
Kaiser's dug-out. with its' steel strong
room door, made to open in two parts in
case a fall of earth jammed it is the
principal sight of the house. Nehru the
imperial nerves were very Had the Kaiser
lived in had train, which had an engine
attached at each end, with steam always
up.
Baron Joseph de Crawliez, the present
Mayor of Spa held the same position all
through the war though imprisoned, and
threatened with execution. He was one
of the leaders of a Belgian steel censor vice
organisation which often succeeded in
getting early knowledge of the plans of
the German General Staff.
Baron d" Crawliez has all sorts of
souvenirs of the German occupation of his
town. One of them is a map with Which
the German soldiers quartered on him
were provided, represent how the Ger-
main Gvivcrnnitiit would remake the map
of Europe when victory was won. He
gave the British Premier a copy of it
the other day. It shows a "Gross
Deutschland" stretching from Petrograd
to the Avenues, with Great Britain
marked as a German colony and Ireland
as an Austro-Hungarian colony.
The Mayor fells, too, the story of the
Emperor's pit cable abdication. The Kaiser
was playing in the grounds of his villa,
where the Peace Conference is now sitting,
damming in little streams as usual,
when she sued rains.
Hindenburg sent for him to come down
to the U puerai Stuff Headquarters at the
Hotel Britannique. The Kaiser sent a
petulant manage that he wouldn't corrie.
The generals humoured him. "You must
come," they said. "The Crown Prince
is here."
So the Emperor's values scraped the
mud off him, girthed his increasingly
corpulent figure into its tunic lines with
imperial decorations, henceforth meaning
less. and sent him down to the hotel,
where Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson
had been planning the reduction of the
once great German army to a police
force. -
At the door two motor-cars were waiting.
In one was a Dutch general. It
the other were German revolutionaries,
representative of the Republic that had
just been proclaimed in Berlin.
The Kaiser strutted into the dining
room of the hotel, where his generals
were waiting.
¡ "You must abdicate," said Hindenburg.
The Kaiser turned, to startled and terrified
face towards him. "Abdicate!" he
exclaimed. Why? It can't be 60 bad as
(far. Surely. I can rely on my generals,
You, Hindenburg! Think of the heights
to which I have raised you. I count on
you, at least."
The burly marched made no reply, and
the Kaiser made his appeal to Luden
clorff: "You then, Ludendorff ?" he said.'
But Ludendorff turned away his face.
"Your Majesty has the choicest, added
Hincleiiburg. "You can go to Holland
in the motor-car that is waiting for you,
or you can return to Germany in charge
of the Republicans."
"Na!" said the Kaiser with a German
sigh, and went off leaving the act of
abdication that lay on the table.
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