ELM II AND THE WHITE LADY OF THE HOHENZOLLERNS.

BY KATHARINE COX.[1]

A great deal has been written and said concerning the various
appearances of the famous White Lady of the Hohenzollerns. As long
ago as the fifteenth century she was seen, for the first time, in
the old Castle of Neuhaus, in Bohemia, looking out at noon day from
an upper window of an uninhabited turret of the castle, and
numerous indeed are the stories of her appearances to various
persons connected with the Royal House of Prussia, from that first
one in the turret window down to the time of the death of the late
Empress Augusta, which was, of course, of comparatively recent
date. For some time after that event, she seems to have taken a
rest; and now, if rumour is to be credited, the apparition which
displayed in the past so deep an interest in the fortunes--or
perhaps one would be more correct in saying misfortunes--of the
Hohenzollern family has been manifesting herself again!

The remarkable occurrences of which I am about to write were
related by certain French persons of sound sense and unimpeachable
veracity, who happened to be in Berlin a few weeks before the
outbreak of the European War. The Kaiser, the most superstitious
monarch who ever sat upon the Prussian throne, sternly forbade the
circulation of the report of these happenings in his own country,
but our gallant Allies across the Channel are, fortunately, not
obliged to obey the despotic commands of Wilhelm II, and these
persons, therefore, upon their return to France, related, to those
interested in such matters, the following story of the great War
Lord's three visitations from the dreaded ghost of the
Hohenzollerns.

Early in the summer of 1914 it was rumoured, in Berlin, that the
White Lady had made her re-appearance. The tale, whispered first of
all at Court, spread, gradually amongst the townspeople. The Court,
alarmed, tried to suppress it, but it refused to be suppressed, and
eventually there was scarcely a man, woman or child in the
neighbourhood who did not say--irrespective of whether they
believed it or not--that the White Lady, the shadowy spectre whose
appearance always foreboded disaster to the Imperial House, had
been recently seen, not once, but three times, and by no less a
person t