--Previous Message--
: Thank you, Charles! I knew I had bungled the
: full quote, but what I remembered so vividly
: was that phrase and the author's clear tone
: of disapproval.

Gary, it was difficult not to know about the estrangement between Vicky and Wilhelm even at the time. For one thing, Wilhelm was anything but subtle about it. As soon as his father was dead he ordered troops to surround the palace and had it thoroughly searched for evidence of any incriminating correspondence suggesting his mother had been revealing Prussian state secrets to her English relatives. Shortly afterwards, his mother was forced to leave the palace and retire to a country retreat with her 3 younger daughters. It was impossible for newspapers and journalists of the time not to pick up that something strange and unpleasant was going on even if they didn't know the full details.




: --Previous Message--
: However, while
: reading a microfilm copy of the New York
: Times from the day after Wilhelm II's
: accession in 1888 (the entire front page was
: given over to stories related to the German
: succession, as it had been 99 days earlier),
: I came across what we'd now call an analysis
: piece in which the author said something
: like, "One wonders what it means for
: the peace of the world when a man who hates
: his own mother sits of the throne of the
: German Empire." I may not have the
: whole line exactly word for word, but I
: vividly recall being struck by that phrase,
: "a man who hates his own mother,"
: because what I had thought was a royal
: family secret was right there on the front
: page of the New York Times!
:
: "It is perhaps logical that a man who
: hates his mother does not love anything
: except himself, his country not excepted,
: and many people, the Socialists and Jews of
: Germany perhaps the most of all, may
: bitterly regret the untimely death of
: Emperor Frederick and the accession of
: William II." - New York Times, June 16,
: 1888, page 1.
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