"Kaiser Referendum"

A sharp rattle of handclaps and a booming salute of "hoch! hoch! HOCH!" greeted Prince August Wilhelm, fourth son of Wilhelm II, last week, when he entered a Berlin auditorium into which 5,000 rabid Monarchists had jammed with intent to demonstrate.

Soon fiery Count Kuno von Westarp, leader of the second largest political party in the land, Die Deutschnationale Volkspartei introduced a still more rabid Monarchist, Col. von Struense, who proceeded to utter things which Count von Westarp, because of his political status, dare not say. Bristling and bellicose, Col. von Struense roared: "A turning point in German history has arrived--this evening marks the beginning of a fight which can end only in the coronation of a German Kaiser!"

That was about all, except that Prince August Wilhelm and Count Kuno von Westarp and the Colonel went on later in the evening to several more Monarchist rallies, with a total attendance estimated around 15,000.

At each rally Col. von Struense repeated that the turning point had now arrived, and explained that Monarchists should busy themselves with drumming up 20,000,000 votes, the legal number required to make effective a referendum on the question of whether Germany shall remain a Republic or revert to the status of Empire.

Count Kuno von Westarp is certainly too shrewd to imagine that the 20,000,000 votes will ever be polled; but he needs an issue around which to rally supporters to his Party, and apparently he has decided that by backing the "Kaiser Referendum" he can win the support of the few thousand super-Monarchist revolutionaries who have heretofore kept up their own party organizations.

Ineffectual Prince August Wilhelm is just now the freak in Count von Westarp's Monarchist side show. His plump, effectual onetime spouse, Princess Alexandra Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, divorced him in 1920. Their son, Prince Ferdinand, just about to turn swart 16, already drills with a Monarchist "Youth Corps."