their views. They claimed that the Crown Prince suffered from a cancer in the throat, and that it was necessary to perform the operation of tracheotomy. At the same time that this grave decision had been taken, Prince William announced that he would leave the following day, November 12, at 9 o'clock in the morning. He thus stayed with his dying father but forty-eight hours.

That evening he visited Mme. Zirio in her small villa, near that where his father lay in agony, and at the same time gave her the autographed photo that we had seen in her parlor.

"Your leaving so soon," Mme. Zirio remarked, “is very reassuring. It no doubt means that the condition of the Crown Prince is better, and that the consultation at which you presided this morning was favorable."

The Prince looked at her sternly, and replied in a hard voice: "Not at all. My father, as was already foreseen when I left Berlin, is lost. His trouble, according to the doctors, is absolutely cancerous. His death is a question of several weeksperhaps days. I am leaving because there is nothing more to be hoped for in prolonging my visit. The Emperor, my grandfather, is very weak. The Czar is coming to Berlin, and my presence there is indispensable. I trust that I shall still have time to come back here." There was silence. Finally, Mme. Zirio asked: "Will your Highness permit me to say, 'Au revoir, Emperorto-be'?" "Certainly," he replied; adding: "But, you know that I, when I shall be Emperor-I shall be Emperor." He then left, and the next day quit San Remo.

At 11 o'clock in the morning of February 9, 1888, the Crown Prince and Princess entered an open carriage for a short drive along the coast. Dr. Mackenzie and Dr. Bramann, aide to Dr. Bergmann, were standing in the doorway to aid the sick man. The Crown Prince was very pale, almost as white as a sheet. As a blanket was being placed over his knees, he put his hand to his throat and murmured: "I am suffering horribly."

Doctor Mackenzie looked at Dr. Bramann and made a sign to the coachman to wait. "This drive is an imprudence," he remarked. "It will be better for the Prince to re-enter." Then turning to Dr. Bramann, he whispered: "We must decide at once. It may be too late to-morrow. We must operate to-day."

"But," Dr. Bramann objected, "my chief, Professor Bergmann, isn't here. I can never take the responsibility for this operation on myself."

“Well!" Dr. Mackenzie exclaimed, "I'll take the responsibility. We shall operate this afternoon."

The Crown Prince threw aside the blanket that covered his knees, and stepped out of the carriage. He was then helped to his room. An iron bed was brought up, and the head-bar was broken in order that it might not be in the way. The bed was placed in the middle of the room, a red cushion was put on the pillows, and the instruments were prepared for the operation. Calm and energetic, the Crown Princess witnessed all these preparatives.

"I don't want anything said regarding the operation," she ordered. “At one o'clock I want all to be at the table as usual."

Her orders were carried out to the letter, and at one o'clock, all except the doctors were at the table, knowing nothing regarding the impending operation.

At the same time, Dr. Mackenzie asked Dr. Bramann: "Are you ready?"

"Yes," the latter replied.

The operation began; and three-quarters of an hour later, the door of the dining room opened, and the Crown Princess, a bit pale, appeared in the doorway, and exclaimed: "It is over! Fritz has the tube in his throat."

After that day, the Crown Prince no longer spoke. Inarticulate sounds came from his mouth; and when he wanted to express his desires he was obliged to write them out on a piece of paper. The Princess redoubled her tender and devoted care of the sick man. A sort of fever kept her going continually. She remained beside the bed of her sick husband day and night. It was only at dawn, in the dim light of early morning, that the little door that opened on the garden saw the exit of a woman, whose heavy veil hardly hid her eyes red with weeping, and features contracted under the strain of continual mental agony. It was the Crown Princess who took the moment for exercise, while the doctors were changing the bandages and continued their arguments over the sick man.

At eight o'clock she was back, tired and dusty, and from that moment she did not quit her husband's bedside. She tried to endow him with her energy and force. She prolonged the resistance of his body by strengthening his soul. She had but one idea, but one thought—that the dying man might mount the steps of the throne. She wanted him to live long enough to be something else than merely Crown Prince Frederick.

And she succeeded!

On March 8, 1888, while I was sitting in Mme. Zirio's parlor, listening to her story of the tragedy, of which each word still sounds in my ears, a theatrical climax occurred. The parlor door was suddenly opened, and a servant rushed in all out of breath, "Madame!" she exclaimed. "Do you know the news?" "No," she replied, astonished at the sudden irruption. "What is it?"

"We received it from the White Villa," the girl continued. "The old Emperor is dead. A grand scene is taking place next to us!"

The three of us left for the White Villa at once. Night had fallen. We entered the big parlor on the ground floor, which was brilliantly lighted up, and where the entire household, now become Imperial, were gathered. Doctors, aides-de-camp, ladiesin-waiting, and servants, were all placed according to rank and honor, forming a circle. In the middle sat the man who was to be Emperor and the woman who was to be Empress.

At this solemn hour, Frederick William was as handsome as in the days of his youth. I still see his tall figure, his calm face framed by a silver beard, his sad blue eyes, and his melancholy smile. A black scarf was thrown about his neck, hiding the tube that had been placed in his throat.

He approached a small table in the middle of the room with a firm and steady step, and wrote a few lines on a piece of paper, which an officer read aloud. It was the official announcement of the death of Kaiser William I, and his own accession to the throne as Kaiser Frederick III. The new Kaiser then approached the Kaiserin and made a deep and reverent bow, as if he would pay homage to her valiant courage, and with a grave and tender gesture passed about her neck the ribbon of the Black Eagle.

The Kaiserin, her eyes bathed in tears, threw herself into the arms of Frederick III, and both of them, standing thus in a long embrace, gave full vent to the tears they had heroically held back so long. The entire household then passed before the new Kaiser. When Sir Morell Mackenzie passed before him, Frederick III seized both of his hands, and drew him to the little table, where he had signed his accession to the throne. Here he wrote again: "I thank you for having caused me to live long enough to recompense the splendid courage of my wife."

One hour later, all the lights were put out in the White Villa. The tragedy of San Remo was over-that of Berlin was about to begin.

I have related this tragedy just as I had seen it, and as my uncle had noted it in his account. I do not know whether "all kinds of obstacles were placed in the ex-Kaiser's path to keep him from his father's side"; but I do know that he did not try very hard to remove these obstacles, and that, to the astonishment of all, he came to San Remo not as a loving son anxious over the condition of his dying father, but as an heir desiring to know how much longer he might be obliged to wait before he could enter into his heritage.

I do not know whether, "among the group of observers, an infamous campaign of organized slander was launched in the newspapers" against him; but I do know that some of these observers, gazing upon the accomplishment of the most regrettable of tragedies under the most beautiful of skies, were sadly struck by the fact that, despite the courage and energy of the splendid woman who held the fortress at the White Villa like a man, her son, a man in the full vigor of his youth, acted with the vanity and pusillanimous ambition of a woman.

"A Kaiser has no friends," William II remarked to Theodore Roosevelt, when the latter visited his court. "He is pitiless." We may add that a Kaiser, apparently, has no relatives-he is heartless!

STEPHANE LAUZANNE.

THE FUTURE OF BRITISH INDUSTRY

BY B. SEEBOHM ROWNTREE

In every industrialized country we may roughly test the progress of industry by asking two questions: First, are Capital and Labor fully and efficiently employed? Secondly, is the worker's standard of life gradually rising? In discussing these questions, let us first consider purely economic developments, and then go on to the more human elements.

I do not propose to analyze at length the economic situation as we find it to-day. Probably, however, we all know that the productive power of the world has so greatly increased as a result of the war that production has outrun consumption. Of course, when we say that, we only mean that production has outrun the power to consume at a given price. Directly after the war, people began expanding their factories, not in Great Britain only, but all over the world, laying down plants far beyond what was needed to supply the possible demand. We were passing through a period of fictitious prosperity. Employers were well off, and workers were well off. They had been paid during the war out of capital, and there was a shortage of goods. Thus, with wealthy people on the one hand and a shortage of goods on the other, the natural result followed. Consumers clamored for the goods-they did not much mind what they paid for them, and there was a tremendous boom in trade. We had rising prices, and rising profits, and both employers and workers got into very bad ways. They imagined that they could maintain prosperity without the condition essential to fundamental prosperity-namely, hard work. It was easy to make money in 1919, and we confused making money with the actual creation of fresh wealth, or establishing a pull on the world's wealth. Now the bubble has been pricked. Directly prices began to drop, the depression began, and it descended like an avalanche. Many people saw prices dropping; and refused