Notes

For the first time since the War, ex-Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm strutted about Potsdam in uniform. He, his eldest son and his brother Eitel, attended the centenary of the founding of the non-commissioned officers' school, after which a war memorial was unveiled and the troops paraded once again before a scion of the House of Hohenzollern. Monarchist flags were everywhere.

Said, so rumor averred, ex-Kaiser Wilhelm to ex-Koenig Friedrich August of Saxony, who was visiting the ex-All Highest at Doom: "Here's hoping." Echoed the ex-Koenig: "Here's hoping." Each was hoping that the other would regain his throne.

An amazed Reichstager groaned as he beheld, in the place of a bust of Field Marshal Moltke, the victor of Sadowa and Sedan,* a bust of Friedrich Ebert, first President of the German Republic. Pale with rage and horror, he rushed through the Reichstag like one possessed, telling his friends of the sacrilege he had seen. His friends rushed off to verify the tale and found to their horror that not only had Moltke's bust vanished, but also that of Bismarck. Der Teufel! This was too much. In a body, they stormed the Reichstag's Decoration Committee, demanding loudly and angrily to be told why the great heroes of the Empire had been deposed in favor of an upstart Republican.

"Calm yourselves, gentlemen," said the spokesman of the Reichstag Decoration Committee, "President Ebert's bust was merely put there to see how it looks. Moltke's will be back soon. So will Bismarck's."

But the irate Monarchists were not to be appeased until the Committee had promised not to remove the statue of Kaiser Wilhelm.

* Sadowa or Koeniggratz (1866): battle in the Austro-Prussian War which ended the old German Confederation (composed of both German and Austrian states) and resulted in the North German Confederation, the nucleus of the German Empire. Sedan (1870): battle in the Franco-Prussian War in which the Emperor Napoleon III was taken prisoner. There was declared to be a "vacancy of power" in France, and the third Republic (the present one) was set up.