Virtuous Prince

While even great and good men have occasionally made sport of Virtue, in every age, it is still venerated with the utmost pomp by a Germanic branch of that famed brotherhood of nobles, The Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

Every knight of St. John swears to "protect women, the orphans, and the weak," and must possess a name untouched by scandal. Last week, in Berlin, there was inaugurated as Grand Master of the Order of St. John a gentleman whose virtue is unsmirched, Prince Oscar Charles Gustav-Adolf von Hohenzollern, 38, fifth son of onetime King and Emperor Wilhelm II.

On July 31, 1914 (the day before Germany declared war on Russia) Prince Oscar, then a youth of 26, utterly disgusted the Court by espousing in morganatic union a comparative nobody: Ina Maria, Countess of Brassewitz. That a royal prince should look no higher was considered in the very poorest taste. That Prince Oscar and his countess should settle down in unobtrusive happiness to the duty of rearing children (four), was deemed commendable but dull.

Meanwhile the Kaiser's second son, Prince Eitel Friedrich Christian Charles, a Major General, was Grand Master of the Order of St. John. He had taken to wife the Princess Charlotte of Oldenburg, petite and ravishing as her famed ancestress Queen Louise of Prussia.* Ostensibly this smart and dashing royal couple also lived in a state of virtue suitable to the household of a Grand Master of St. John. Actually their secrets were fashionably half concealed. They had no children, and, not dull, they encouraged a certain very zestful officer of the guards Baron Frieherr von Plettenburg-Mehrum, Plettenburg. When, in 1922, the Baron's wife sued him for divorce, she named Princess Charlotte--who was reported to have said blithely on the witness stand: "My husband knew everything. I swear it with the greatest possible pleasure!"

Even so, the Order of St. John did not depose its Grand Master upon such flimsy, hearsay tittle-tattle. At last, in 1926, Princess Charlotte divorced her husband, charging that he had caused her "mental anguish." Presumably this violated his oath to "protect women . . . and weak." A conclave of 'the Order of St. John met secretly, accepted the resignation of Prince Eitel-Friedrich as Grand Master, then declared him "an honorary Knight of St. John."

Only last week, eight months after the resignation of Prince Eitel-Friedrich, was the Order of St. John moved to invest Prince Oscar as Grand Master, after an exhaustive investigation of his private life.

* Auguste Wilhelmine Amalie Luise (1776-1810) is chiefly famed because of her personal appeal to Napoleon at his camp in Tilsit after the battle of Jena (1806). She begged him to have mercy upon Prussia, but was only partially successful in obtaining certain concessions which enabled the Prussian army eventually to build up its strength,