A Home for Soldiers' Babies.
The plan so far is to have everything managed by women, and they are to have officers the same as the army. This will make the bright women more efficient in management and the duller women will learn to obey.
Already the society women of Germany have formed clubs for learning to do things. They are learning to make gardens, to cook and to sew. Women are now being drafted for the munition factories, and as most of these girls have before been housemaids, many German housewives are thrown upon their own resources.
That most of the German women would be benefitted by a year's training cannot be denied. It would help to make them stronger in body and in mind. This war has been a great example to the world of what military training means to the men, and the women of Germany feel that if they must do the work of a man, they should have the same benefits as a man.
THE KAISERIN AND THE HOHENZOLLERN PRINCESSES.
The most popular man in Germany is the Kaiser, and the Kaiserin is the most popular woman. William II may have his critics, but no one can deny that in him Augusta Victoria has found what she considers an ideal husband. The only domestic tyranny that I heard of his engaging in is, that every birthday he gives the Kaiserin twelve hats for a present. These hats he picks out himself, and she has to wear them. From the pictures one sees of the Kaiserin wearing a hat one does feel that he is a sort of barbarian and rather rough on his wife. On her last birthday when I was in Berlin, she would allow no gifts to be given her—perhaps she wanted one year without hats—and instead, she requested all the givers to send wine, jams and preserves to the soldiers. This collection was called the Kaiserin's birthday gift.
The Kaiserin of Germany.
Except for the present war, the life and reign of Augusta Victoria has been a peaceful one, and it is now twenty-eight years since she became the first lady in the land. She was born in the little castle of Dolzig in Schleswig-Holstein, and there she spent her childhood with her two younger sisters and her brother. The young Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, the present Kaiser, was a half cousin of the young Princess, their mothers being half sisters. Prince Wilhelm had seen her but once at an English court party given by a mutual relative, and it was not until he was invited to a hunting-party at her father's castle that they became acquainted.
