own domains;
jealously keeping away from the Emperor's court and jealously
guarding every remnant of rule which the constitution of the
German Empire has bequeathed to them.

Once I asked one of these princelings what his older brother, the
reigning prince, did with his time in the small provincial town
which is the capital of the principality. The brother looked at
me with real surprise in his eyes and answered, "Why he reigns!"

Before the constitution of the German Empire, many of these
poverty-stricken little courts were centres of kindly amusement,
even of intellectual life.

The court of the Grand Duke Charles-Augustus, of
Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach at Weimar where Goethe resided and where he
was entrusted with responsible state duties, was renowned in
Europe as a literary centre.

Many of these princelings, however ridiculous their courts may
have seemed, exercised despotic power. To-day the inhabitants of
the two Mecklenburg duchies are protected by neither constitution
nor bill of rights. The grand duke's power is absolute and he can
behead at will any one of his subjects in the market-place or
torture him to death in the dungeons of the castle and is
responsible to God alone.

Here is an example from history. George Louis, Duke of
Brunswick-Luneburg-Celle, married his mistress, a Huguenot girl
called Eleanore d'Olbreuze. They had one daughter, Sophia
Dorothea, who married the Elector of Hanover, who was also George
I of England. Sophia Dorothea was supposed to have been involved
in a love affair with a Swedish Count, Philip Konigsmarck.
Konigsmarck was murdered by order of George I, and Sophia
Dorothea incarcerated in Ahlden where she died in 1726.
Konigsmarck's sister went to Saxony to beg the aid of the Saxon
King, Augustus the Strong. She failed to get news of her brother,
but became one of the mistresses of Augustus the Strong and the
mother of the celebrated Marshal Saxe. I say one of the
"mistresses" of Augustus the Strong because he boasted that he
was the father of 365 illegitimate children!

The daughter of Sophia Dorothea was the mother of Frederick the
Great and his brothers, and therefore, an ancestor of the present
German Kaiser. Any one writing about her in a disparaging manner
is subject to be imprisoned, under the decisions of the Imperial
Supreme Court, for "lese-majeste" or injuring the person of the
present monarch in daring to slander his ancestors. And, I
suppose, any one referring to