On being given to understand that if he accepted the position of heir
apparent, his sixteen-year-old boy would become the ward of Emperor
William, and that the authority of the kaiser would be superior to his
own over the lad, Prince Arthur declined to have anything to do with
the Saxe-Coburg succession, and abandoned both his own claims thereto
and those of his son, in favor of his young nephew, the fatherless
Duke of Albany. It was precisely on the same ground that the Duke of
Cumberland declined to complete the agreement whereby a reconciliation
was to be effected between himself and the kaiser. Born crown prince
of the now defunct Kingdom of Hanover, he should have succeeded to the
throne of the Duchy of Brunswick on the death of his kinsman, the late
Duke of Brunswick, in 1884. The German Emperor, however, decided that
he could not be permitted to take possession of the sovereignty of the
duchy, nor to assume the status of one of the federal rulers of the
confederation known as the German Empire, unless he recognized the
latter, as now constituted, that is to say with his father's Kingdom
of Hanover incorporated with Prussia. For a long time he refused to
do this, but was ultimately persuaded by his brother-in-law, the late
czar, and the Prince of Wales, to consent to a reconciliation
with Prussia, and to accept the present condition of affairs. The
arrangements were on the eve of being completed when a conflict arose
between the duke and the kaiser, as to the education of the former's
eldest son, Prince George. The duke wished to send him to the Vizhum
College, at Dresden, where so many members of the sovereign families,
and of the great houses of the nobility, have received their
instruction, while the kaiser objected to this particular school on
the ground that its teachings were calculated to increase instead
of to diminish particularist and anti-Prussian sentiments. The duke
thereupon declared that he alone was competent to judge and determine
how his boy should be educated, whereupon the kaiser put forth his