11 FEBRUARY 1888, Page 6

THE GERMAN CROWN PRINCE.

THE news of Friday evening from San Remo will be received in England with as profound and as honest a sorrow as in Germany, and with much more surprise. The Germans have from the first suspected that the illness of the Crown Prince was of the most serious kind, and have believed their own specialists, who, especially in Vienna, have made no secret of their convictions on the subject. The English, however, have depended upon the telegrams from San Remo, and the telegrams have been systematically and carefully drawn up to inspire a hope for which there was little scientific reason. Partly from a natural feeling which forbade them to lose confidence, and partly under the pressure of interests, political and other, of the highest moment, those who control the affairs of the Crown Prince have fallen into the error that the concealment of facts would improve them, and that it was expedient, as well as right, to raise the impression that the Prince would speedily be equal to any duties he might be called on to perform. That injudicious effort was greatly aided by Sir Morell Mackenzie's opinion that the disease was not cancer, an opinion probably accurate, but which was taken in this country to mean that in his judgment the case was an exceedingly hopeful one. It is most improbable that Sir Morell Mackenzie ever thought or said anything of the kind, for there

appears in the Scotsman of Tuesday an account, taken down to all appearance from his own lips, from which competent judges can form but one, and that a disheartening conclusion. The Crown Prince has for days been in extreme danger, owing to the rapid swelling of the larynx, and although suffocation has been prevented by the operation of tracheotomy, the danger is in no way over, or even lessened. The Prince's life may be preserved —though his voice can hardly be—by the mercy of God and the amazing vitality of the constitution which he inherits ; but the doctors expect little from their own skill. The disease is not cancer, but it is perichondritis—inflammation of the cartilage of the larynx—in its most destructive form ; and unless it stops, the most skilful surgery in the world can ensure nothing but a longer term of patient endurance.

Now that the truth is known, we trust, with the Times, that the authorities at San Remo will take the whole world into their confidence, and publish frequent and, above all, accurate bulletins of the Crown Prince's condition, as was done most honestly in the case of the Prince of Wales. The great cannot escape the penalties of greatness, and none need fear the smallest lack of sympathy in any portion of the European community. Civilised men are not hard when they can see suffering which may to-morrow be their own ; and it is the direct personal interest of almost every man in Europe that the Prince should live and reign. Peace, in great measure, hangs on it, and more than peace—though if this war comes, it will be a calamity such as the world has not suffered since 1813—namely, the whole drift and object of European political effort for the next half-century. In plain English, the guidance, or rather the direct sovereignty, of Central Europe—three mighty nations already allied and in arms —will pass to a man who is distinctly competent, and who on Wednesday repudiated the suggestion that he sought glory through war, praying that God might keep him from "such criminal levity," but who in the same breath declared that he was emphatically "a soldier," and that, "as our great Chancellor has said," Brandenburgers fear only God. If the Crown Prince does not recover, a young soldier will replace a mature statesman on the strongest throne in the world, the stone throne with its feet of cannon- balls ; and only the God whose mysterious providence has struck down the Crown Prince knows what that may mean for the civilisation of Europe, which tends at this moment to become a huge and dreary barrack, in which all the objects of life are sacrificed to the necessity of keeping alive. Even here, where men do not know what invasion means, and keep up their magpie chatter as if the whole future of the only progressive continent were not at stake, all sympathies, all prayers, all instinctive hopes will go with the Crown Prince ; and on the Continent, if the truth were only known, he would be watched like a favourite child by hostile nations. It is most unwise, we must add it is not gracious, under such circumstances to keep up a courtly fiction which cannot benefit the Prince, but can and does diminish the fervour of sympathy with which his illness is regarded by all who either understand the facts, or who can feel for a suffering lifted to the very heights of pathos by what seems to be the irony of fate. It is one who might have been, and in the usual course of human affairs who ought to have been, a good Owsar in Europe, who is lying speechless there at San Remo, only catching breath through a silver tube.