THE KAISER AT POSEN.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 3462, 14 October 1913, Page 3

THE KAISER AT POSEN.

COLD WELCOME FROM THE POLES.

LONDON, Aug. 29. The Kaiser entered Posen, the capital of German Poland, on Tuesday in heavy rain to review hie Fifth Army Corps, to entertain the provincial! gentry, and to be present at the consecration of the chapel of his new Castle.

The German element of the population displayed much enthusiasm. The veterans’ associations, t'he school, and the German colonists lined the streets and cheered His Majesty, but the Poles, who constitute the majority of the inhabitants, remained at -home, resolute in their determination not to be reconei’ed to Prussia or Prussia’s King. Their houses displayed no hunting or other decorations. One Polish house which showed some garlands on its facade had its plate glass windows broken by furious Polish patriots. Several Polish nobles who have accepted the Kaiser’s invitation to dinner are pilloried in the Polish press as “kissing the hand which chastises them.”. The Kaiser’s visit leaves no doubt as to the absolute dominion of Prussia, says the Berlin correspondent of the Daily Mail. It has brought into relief much of the antagonism prevailing all over Eastern Germany between Teuton and Slav.

The Poles, a Slavonic and Roman Catholic race, staunch to their nationality, hopelessly outnumber the Germans in the province and are increasing at a much faster rate. Millions have been spent in planting German colonies in their midst but the fate of the colonists has been ruthlessly depicted in Clara Viebig’s novel, “The Sleeping Army.” The Poles resent address in German, fight bard for their own language, and have, indeed a sound literature and an extensive series of translations from English and other tongues. The poorer Poles emigrate to Western Germany for the harvest and for the lower forms of labor, but the nobles and othes still cling to the hope of a new Poland. Their last King, Stanislaus, fell in 1795, when the final partition of the kingdom between Austria Russia, and Prussia was completed.

AN EXCITING INCIDENT. * An exciting incident occurred on Wednesday morning as the Imperial party was leaving the restored Rathaus, at Posen, after the inauguration ceremony. The Crown Prince and Princess August Wilhelm had just entered a motor car when the shaft of a Court carriage, the horses of which had shied, was suddenly intruded upon them. The Princess seems to have been in some danger of injury, but her companion seized her by the arm and pulled her to one side, so that the pole did not, touch her. Meanwhile the other Princes, who were standing by, tackled the horses and with assistance of members of the public, got them under restraint. According to one of the Posen papers the Emperor, on making the round of the Rathus, noticed from the balcony a fountain representing the legend of Proserpine, which stands in the Market-place, and remarked to the Chief Burgomaster: “That was an earlier Chief Burgomaster who ran away with an alderman’s wife. It is a pity that these downright customs of the past no longer exist. It is said that at the banquet the Monarch expresed his approval of the action of the municipality in supplying the town, during liis visit, with frozen Australian mutton.