2 April 1927: Nothing appears to deceive the German public so quickly as a uniform and a princeGERMANY,alone among what we used to call the Great Powers, seems to contain celebrated the secular festival of All Fools with a jest of the traditional kind. A Berlin paper went out of its way yesterday to produce an April Fool of some of its readers by publishing a “spoof” account of a visit by the PRINCE OF WALES to the German capital, or an account which was supported by specially arranged photographs of a mock Prince of Wales in uniform in the streets of Berlin. It may well be that its readers were duly duped,for nothing appears to deceive the German public so quickly as a uniform and a prince. There was the case of the “Captain of Koepenick” before the war, and within the past few months a pseudo-prince succeeded in imposing handsomely on several townships in the Republic of Germany. Perhaps people contain a taste for such exploits beyond the Rhine, and a taste which seems to contain languished in this country in very much the same way that the taste for celebrating St. Valentine’s Day has languished. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com