THE DUCHESS GUNTHER OF SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN
In direct defiance of the law I was ordered to sign my name to a document by which I relinquished my future inheritance from the Empress to my children. At last, worn out with sufferings, I was on the point of consenting for a consideration of an annual payment of a sum of six thousand marks, in exchange for which I was to be reduced to isolation and slavery, and to be further plundered of all that might belong to me.
I will say nothing here to the Duke of Holstein, this soldier financier; but to my daughter Dora, the fruit of my body, whom I have fed at my breast, and whom I have brought up, I say this:
"You may possess all the outward appearances of respectability. You may enjoy the benefits of a fortune of which I know the source, you may experience neither shame nor remorse, you may even dare to pray. But God can never be deceived. No wickedness, no guilty complicity, no action contrary to Nature will escape His justice. Sooner or later He will judge all men according to their works."
Before I conclude my account of the machinations of these human vultures who attempted to assail my liberty and my rights, when once I had been unfortunate enough to ask help from my children, I must not forget to mention that later, when I regained the captaincy of my soul, I appealed to Justice at Munich. The courts there declared the renunciations extracted from me in my misery and frenzy when I was starving and homeless to be invalid.
During the war I have often actually not known where I should sleep, or of what my next meal would consist.
I write this frankly, without a particle of false shame—firm in the approval of my own conscience.
I have never willingly injured anyone. I have suffered in silence. I am speaking to-day in my own defence, bringing as evidence a family drama which touches contemporary history. I speak with candour, but I am not actuated by feelings of hatred. Wickedness has diminished. But my personal sufferings have in nowise lessened. I was born a king's daughter, I shall die a king's daughter. I have certainly pleaded for assistance, but more on behalf of my attendants than for myself. I could not bear to see these devoted creatures, my comfort and support in my misery, weep and grow pale during these dark days.
The count had been obliged to leave Munich. On the morning of August 25, 1916, his room was suddenly invaded by the police. He was put in prison, then taken to Hungary, and afterwards interned near Budapest. He was by birth a Croatian and therefore regarded as a subject of the Entente, even before the defeat which united Croatia and Servia. Human justice is really only a word!