AN ENGLISH WIFE IN BERLIN.*

EVELYN, Princess Blucher, was one of those very unfortunate people who found their family interests and allegiances divided by the war. An Englishwoman, married to a German, she decided, when war was inevitable, that she would stay with her husband in Germany. As a matter of fact, she and her husband had both lived continuously in England for some years before the war, and it was his enforced return to the country of his birth that required her to take a decision which, though painful, was creditable to her. If there are any other diarists who kept daily notes of their impressions while their sense of loyalty was tortured and dragged this way and that by the war, but who nevertheless managed to preserve as much fairness and coolness as Princess Blucher displays in this book, they need not be ashamed to publish their records. Princess Bliicher was not afraid to set down in her diary her horror at many German abominations which were being excused all round her, and she did this although she was one of the colony of " internationals " in Berlin who were continually watched and were frequently under direct suspicion. Though she had a just mind, she had a stalwart one, and she never allowed her sense of right and wrong to be deflected by the refractions of the German atmosphere.

She is a daughter of the late Mr. Frederick Stapleton- Bretherton, of Rainhill Hall, Lancashire. In 1907 she married Count Blucher, great-great-grandson of the famous Marshal of Waterloo. Prince Blucher, her father-in-law, did not die until 1916. He will be remembered by many English people as the tenant of the island of Herm, one of the Channel Islands which he rented from Great Britain and where he reared kan- garoos till he was ejected as an alien. He had quarrelled many years before with the Prussian and Austrian Governments, and had remained at enmity with them. When Prince Lichnowsky and the staff of the German Embassy left London at the opening of the war the author of these memoirs travelled with them. We are bound to say that the freedom with which Princess Bliicher—as we shall call her for convenience' sake throughout, though her husband did not succeed to the title until 1916—was allowed te move about in Germany and to live an almost normal life in Berlin in spite of the hectic momenta when she fell under some particular suspicion, compares on the whole favourably with the manner in which some harmless aliens were treated here. If to some readers Princess Bliicher seems to hold too much of a balance between Germany and Great Britain, it should be remembered that she and her husband belonged to what may be called the Lichnowsky school of politics. That is to say, she had made friends with the comparatively small group of Germans who really tried to cultivate friendship with Great Britain, who did not want a break between the two countries and did not believe that war would come. During the journey of the German Embassy staff from London to Berlin the talk, we are told, was "sad and bitter." "They all blamed the officials in Berlin who had, they said, grossly mismanaged the negotiations." She refers at the same time to the prevalent official conviction in Germany that Russia definitely intended sooner or later to attack Germany. Why Germany should have preferred suicide to waiting to discover whether Russia really meant to attack her is, however, not explained. It never is. But this belief about the "Great Slav Danger" is evidently- still an obsession in Germany. The present writer read a letter from a cultured German only a few days ago in which, incredible though it may seem, the view was seriously expressed that Great Britain had

betrayed not only her own interest but the interests of civilisa- tion in failing to help to crush Slavdom. "Germany has failed in her great office," was the sense of the letter, "owing to the action of Great Britain. But the turn of Great Britain will come. A hundred years hence she will be taking up tho weapon that she struck from the hand of Germany." All this sounds mad and unreal and unrepentant enough, but we shall mis- understand Germany in the future if we do not recognise that these opinions are still fashionable among intellectual Germans. There is much to illustrate and emphasize them in Princess Blticher's book.

The entanglements in which certain families are bound th be Involved when there is a European War are nicely illustrated by Princess Blucher's remarks on the sinking of the German cruiser BlUcher on January 24th, 1915. A " few months after her raarriaga Princess Bliieher was invited to launch the cruiser • An English Wife in Berlin : a Private Memoir of Events. Politics. and Daily Life in Gernsany throughout the War and the Social lievoltdion •f1918. by Evelyn,

Princess Wicker. London : Constable. Ms. net]

which was to bear the name of her husband's family. The launch took place at Kiel, and among the onlookers was Princess Bliicher's sister, who afterwards married Admiral Charlton of

the British Navy. When the Blucher was sunk in the war the captain was rescued from the sea and was taken as a prisoner to Edinburgh. While he was conversing with the British officer who commanded the escort during the transference of the prisoners, he remarked that an Englishwoman had launched the Blucher, and that her photograph, which had been kept on

beard, had gone down with the ship. "Yes," said the British naval officer, "I happen to know all about it, as the lady is my sister-in-law. .My name is Throckmorton."

Perhaps the two most interesting incidents in the diary refer to the author's conversation with Casement and the part she was persuaded to play in sending a peace message to England.

Casement visited her on more than one occasion, and it is evident that his visits were not welcome, but Princess Bliicher felt that she could not refuse to receive him when he sent a most agitated telephone message to her on April 4th, 1916. She describes how Casement came into the room "like one demented," talked in a husky whisper, and examined all the doors lest anyone should be listening. He explained that he was in reality a prisoner, and that the Germans would not let him leave the country.

The German Foreign Office thought he was a spy, and the Ger- man Admiralty had insisted on his undertaking the mad escapade of landing on the Irish coast. "He sat down and wept like a child." Then he exclaimed : "They are holding a pistol to my head if I refuse, and they have a hangman's rope ready for me in England ; and so the only thing for me to do is to go out and kill myself."

As regards the peace message to England, Princess Blucher writes :—

" BERLIN, May 1916.—To our great astonishment we have been asked to undertake a little peace movement on our own account. They want me to write to the Duke of Norfolk, as the head Of the ettholics in England, and find out if they are in any way associated with the Pope's well-known efforts for peace. In answer to my objection that my letter would prob- ably never pass the English censor, they replied that it would not go by post at all, but by special messenger, and that I could see the very man who would personally Place my letter on any writing-table in London—a curious proof of how the censor may be evaded. They actually seem to have succeeded moreover, for after I had with considerable qualms of conscience committed myself to the letter, a reply reached me in due course which I will not quote. It was of a very guarded nature, and threw grave doubts not only upon the prospects, but upon the expediency of peace at present.'

We will end with a quotation from the diary which shows the true Englishwoman's spirit peeping out and accurately pene-

trating a situation in spite of all the prejudice around her, the misleading statements, and the aforesaid refractions of the atmosphere. Her remarks refer to the Zeppelin raids on London and to the stories which had reached Germany that fashion- able shops in London were selling nightdresses and dressing- gowns advertised as " Zepp nighties," "Robes for Raids," &c. :—

" This to the German mind appears the zenith of super- ficiality, frivolity, and English arrogance (arrogance in their belief that nothing can touch them). They are much too ignorant of the English character to realize that an Englishman (or woman) might feel a pang of fear, but with his last breath he would say, I don't care.' The English could not have chosen a more effective way of showing the enemy the useless- ness of these raids than by Jeering at them."