Wilhelm at 75

Life in Wilhelm Hohenzollern's 30-acre realm of Doom in Holland is always stiff with etiquet. A Court Gazette tells the miniscule doings of the court, gives notice two weeks in advance of those whom the onetime Kaiser has graciously agreed to receive. When Brig.-General Cornelius Vanderbilt's news-nosing son "Neely" tried to crash the ex-Kaiser's presence last spring, he was repulsed with the stiff story that he had not been Gazetted two weeks in advance. But life at Doom is terribly sleepy. In the ivied main palace and the outlying smaller palace for smaller princes, the family retires early, lies abed until noon, reading, smoking, dozing. Sometimes they listen irritably to the clop, clop of Wilhelm's ax, making Doom's big daily news. Lately rheumatism has kept Wilhelm abed too, denied him the chief pleasure he gets as Germany's richest man (estimated fortune: $200,000,000).

But one day last week Doom came to life. In Doom's Pabst Hotel doors slammed early in the morning in the famed "corridor of princes." Down the street marched a score of young men and old, onetime kings and princes of Imperial German states. Under the gate arch hung with a pennoned canopy, through the palace entrance marked with the letter "W" in electric light bulbs, they trooped to salute their onetime King-Emperor. Then the black-suited company of men, led by Wilhelm, gave praise to the God of the Hohenzollerns. It was Wilhelm's 75th birthday.

A Leipzig printing house signalized the occasion by publishing a book he had written on Oriental symbols, eruditely entitled : The Chinese Monad: its History and Meaning. While Doom hummed with Monarchist delegations, Wilhelm decorated his head gardener and eight under-gardeners with the Royal Order of the House of Hohenzollern, led another religious service for his kin and house servants, inspected tons of birthday gifts including one huge wild boar (live) and bushels of congratulations. Protesting that "the only birthdays worth making memorable are those marking decades," he reminded his guests that in five years he will be 80.

The day was less than memorable for Nazi Germany. Though boys on the streets sold Wilhelm's favorite flower, the blue cornflower, to help the Nazi winter relief fund, Storm Troopers broke up a Monarchists' birthday eve ball in Berlin. Other troopers cut short a ceremonial toast of onetime Imperial Army officers to Wilhelm's birthday while still others patrolled Berlin's streets denuding house fronts of the Imperial flag. Said a Nazi leader, with an eye to Nazi history books: "Hitler is the restorer of authority from above and discipline from below. He is the restorer of self-respect and hope, but no restorer of kings."

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