1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [9]
The Prince of Wales, on the other hand, was quick to appreciate that the age of the German Emperor was very much to the point. He was over ninety and he was frail. Inevitably he must die soon. His heir, Prince William’s father, was dying too. This fifty-six-year-old Crown Prince (who was, in the words of his mother-in-law, Queen Victoria, ‘noble and liberal-minded’) had been waiting thirty years for the throne and with it the opportunity of bringing much-needed reform to autocratic government in Germany. Now he was mortally ill with cancer of the throat and, like it or not, the chances were that Prince William would soon be Kaiser. Ever the diplomat, the Prince of Wales talked his mother round to the view that for the sake of future relations with the German Empire it would be unwise to offend its Emperor-to-be. The Queen relented, but held the Prince of Wales responsible for ‘keeping William sweet’.*
‘Keeping William sweet’ was a matter of keeping him occupied and, if possible, flattered. The Jubilee programme fortunately included almost enough parades, reviews and tattoos to satisfy even Prince William’s passion for military pageantry, and they would keep him busy for some of the time; for the rest of it, his uncle shrewdly guessed that nothing would keep his nephew sweeter than arranging for him to inspect a few regiments. From the future Kaiser’s point of view the highlight of this agreeable programme was the day he spent with the Prince of Wales’ own regiment, the 10th Royal Hussars, at their barracks in Hounslow. The visit was a huge success and the future Kaiser came back full of it. In particular, he was impressed by a delightful novelty the like of which he had never seen before. It was the regimental machine-gun and it was the private property of the Commanding Officer, Colonel Liddell. The previous year he had purchased it out of his own pocket from the Nordenfeld Company and had it mounted on a light two-wheeled carriage that a horse could gallop into action. Prince William had been charmed. He inspected the regiment, rode with it in the morning, lunched in the officers’ mess, rode out again in the afternoon and, as a grand finale to the day, even joined the Hussars in a wild cavalry charge. The Prince made a flattering speech before his departure and soon after he returned to Berlin sent his signed photograph, in the uniform of his own Hussars of the Guard, in appreciation of the splendid day he had spent at Hounslow. That was not all. Four invitations were dispatched by his grandfather, the German Emperor. They were addressed to the Colonels of the four regiments the Prince had inspected during his visit and invited them to spend three weeks as the Emperor’s guests in Berlin.
When the four Colonels travelled to Berlin, they took with them a wonderful present by command of the Prince of Wales. It was a machine-gun, just like the one William had admired at Hounslow, complete with an identical ‘galloping carriage’. It capped William’s pleasure in what were to be three blissful weeks. With his parents wintering in Italy in the vain hope of improving his father’s health there was no one in Berlin to cramp his style. Under the rheumily indulgent eye of his aged grandfather, who found this young turkey-cock more to his taste than his gentler, liberal-minded heir, William could strut and show off to his heart’s content.
Like his uncle, the Prince of Wales, Colonel-in-Chief of the 10th Royal Hussars, Prince William had a cavalry regiment of his own. They were the Hussars of the Guard, the crack Garde Husarien Regiment, and he instantly whisked the two Cavalry Colonels off to Potsdam to enjoy the hospitality of his regiment for the duration of their visit. It gave him huge pleasure to show off his troops, to ride with the British officers as his horsemen drilled, to escort them on inspections of the stables and the barracks, to ride out with them on manoeuvres, to fight mock battles, to entertain his visitors at formal dinners in the mess and at the Palace, to present them to his grandfather