1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [8]
The fact was that despite the military upbringing, obligatory for Hohenzollern princes, despite his pretension to military knowledge, the outwardly respectful members of the General Staff were deeply wary of their Kaiser and his meddlesome ways. Let him design dress uniforms for his regiments, let him order parades and reviews, let him play at manoeuvres – let him do anything at all with the Army that would keep him harmlessly amused, but prevent him at all costs from doing anything that would upset the long-established status quo.
But there was a grain of justification for the Kaiser’s impatience with his senior Generals, for among the torrent of half-baked notions that poured with inexhaustible energy from his restless brain there was an occasional flash of insight or an idea worth considering. The machine-gun was one of them and, like so many things the Kaiser admired and envied, it had come from England. He had first seen one years before when he had attended the Golden Jubilee celebrations of his grandmother, Queen Victoria.
It was the glorious summer of 1887 and for the whole of June it was ‘Queen’s Weather’ – day after day of cloudless skies and brilliant sunshine. There was a large gathering of European royalties, most of them related to each other and to the Queen. There were maharajahs from India, gorgeous in silk brocades and bedizened with jewels; there was the Queen of Hawaii, and the heirs to the exotic thrones of Japan, Persia, Siam, and when the Queen rode to Westminster Abbey in an open carriage drawn by six white horses, no fewer than five crowned heads and thirty-two princes rode in her procession. Silks shone, plumes nodded, jewels flashed, orders and medals glistened in the sun, harnesses burnished to blinding radiance gleamed and glinted on horses groomed to look hardly less magnificent than their riders. Even the Queen, though simply dressed, wore diamonds in her bonnet. London had never seen such a display and the crowds went wild.
Queen Victoria’s children and grandchildren had married into every royal house, every dukedom and principality of united Germany, from the mighty ruling house of Prussia downwards, and a host of Hohenzollerns and Hesses, Hohenlohes, Coburgs and Battenbergs, with her British blood mingling with Albert’s German blood in their veins, were living proof of the ties of friendship and brotherhood that bound the two nations. On this most glorious day of Queen Victoria’s glorious reign it was unthinkable that those ties could ever be severed.
The Queen’s eldest daughter, the Crown Princess of Prussia, drove with the Queen in her carriage. In front rode her husband the Crown Prince and some distance behind, in strict order of precedence, rode the future Kaiser, their twenty-eight-year-old son, Prince William of Prussia. Prince William was vexed. He was not pleased with his position and while he was a little too much in awe of his grandmother the Queen-Empress to complain to her directly, he let it be known that in his opinion a Prince of Prussia, although at present only the son of a Crown Prince, deserved to rank before princes and even kings of duskier complexions who ruled over less eminent domains.
William was always an awkward presence in the royal circle and the Queen, when confiding her dread of entertaining ‘the royal mob’ to her daughter, had made no bones about the fact that she would prefer him not to come: ‘I did not intend asking Willie for the Jubilee, first because Fritz and you come, and secondly because… we shall be awfully squeezed at Buckingham Palace… and I fear he may show his dislikes and be disagreeable.… I think Germany would understand his remaining in the country when you are away on account of the