The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-03-03
BERLIN REVOLT
 OF 70 YEARS AGO
Prussian King Was Far From Militaristic In
 Those Days.
(Rose welgau in London spectator)

(Rose welgau in London Spectator
 When I was seven years old my father was appointed English minis ter in Berlin and we went to Ger many. This was in 1S42. We went first to Cologne, where there was a great gathering of princes and people for the reopening of Cologne cathe dral after the restoration by King Frederick William ". of Prussia, the elder brother of the future emperor. King Frederick William was a very different type from the military caste who have since ruled Prussia-an ideaIist, a dreamer, artistic, literary, and. essentially unmilitary. Germany was all split up into a collection of small states. United Germany was a dream of the advanced liberal pro lessor and democrats, whose name was in these days considered synony- nous with JacObins and cut-throats, like the first terrorists of the French revolution. Berlin itself was practi- cally little more than g. provincial city, but under the influence of the king it possessed a very intellectual society-art, music and literature were all fostered there, and life went on quietly and pleasantly enough. I was too young, of course, to know anything of what was going on, and only remember of this now what ] have been told in later years by my mother.
 My parents belonged to a genera ton which had witnessed the NapoI- comic wars, and had themselves >in their youth known many of those who had witnessed and endured tho horrors of the terror of the French revolution. The present generation, when they talk of the narrowness and intolerance of the tory regime then in force, forget that the tories were still under the impression of the hor- TOTS of that awful upheaval, and it seems quite possible that one hundred years hence the advanced and en- frightened classes will wonder at the intolerance of the people who will now have nothing to do with Ger many!
 In 1S48 came the revolution of March following on the Paris revolu- ton of February. The Paris news had naturally caused very great ex- citement in all diplomatic circles and nothing else was talked of. so even children like myself q was then InlTleenD mad an Idea that extra or dinary things were happening, and we began to hear of rows in different parts of the town in the evenings but no particular importance was at tached to them, and life went on as usual. Saturday, March 18th. was 6 most beautiful spring day, and I and my gOverness went shopping in the town. There were a good many peo. pie about in Inter den Linden, but not more than might have been expected
 on such a fine day. We turned III the Friedrich-strasse, and when W,
 had gone a little way we saw a grea crowd in the middle of the stree surrounding a couple of carts and : cab, which they were proceeding [, upset. My governess, a young gir herself, got rather scared and won dered what 1t was. I had heard de | scription of barricades being built fl Paris Illustrated paper did not ex ist then, but my mother had read ou the descriptions of the Paris revo1l1 ton in the English papers). and l said: They are building a barri ! cade," and at the same moment man ran past, saying. Nun seht lost' | t'Now the row Is beginning!") an, 1 we turned up the Mohranstrass ssa am 1 made our way homewards as o,,iclz1,