Prince Maximilian of Baden

[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.] POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE DEPARTMENT, FOREIGN OFFICE. GERMANY/017. CONFIDENTIAL. [October 3, 1918.] MEMORANDUM ON PRINCE MAXIMILIAN OF BADEN. 1. PRINCE MAXIMILIAN of Baden was born in 1867 and is the son of the late Prince William of Baden, who was brother of the late reigning Grand Duke Frederick I, son-in-law of old Emperor William. He is therefore a first cousin of the present reigning Grand Duke Frederick II. His mother was Marie, Princess Romanowsky, Duchess of Leuchtenberg, a descendant of Eugène Beauharnais. He married in 1900 Princess Marie Louise (of Great Britain and Ireland), daughter of the Duke of Cumberland. He is consequently brother-in-law of the Duke of Brunswick, who is married to the Emperor William's daughter, and of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg Schwerin, whose sister is the German Crown Princess. He has the title of "Grand Ducal Highness," the style of "Royal Highness" being confined to the reigning and the Hereditary Grand Dukes. As the reigning Grand Duke (married in 1885) has no issue, Prince Max is heir- presumptive to the Grand Ducal throne. 2. On the 16th February, 1918, he gave his views on the whole situation, as it then was, in an interview with Dr. Mantler, manager of Wolff's Bureau. Among other things he said:— "The key of the situation lies with the Anglo-Saxon peoples." He discussed and criticised utterances of President Wilson, Mr. Lloyd George, Lord Robert Cecil, and Lord Lansdowne, and defined his own war-aims as follows:— (1.) Freedom of the seas, the principle of which was that "non-combatants on sea and on land should be spared the sufferings of war." (2.) "The world must not be divided into two groups of Powers competing in armaments." This implied a fundamental change of spirit in the nations and co-operation instead of rivalry. (3.) The first sign of this change of spirit would be a general adhesion to the principle of commercial peace. Peace must not result in the continuation of the war by other methods. (4.) The black races must not be treated as a mere means to an end. "The opening up of Africa must proceed in accordance with the principles of responsibility towards the black race and a sense of the solidarity of the white race." He denounced Trotsky and the Bolsheviks as representatives of a system which "destroyed freedom," while what was wanted was a system which "protected freedom." Germany's historic task for a thousand years (Lechfeld, 955 A.D.) had been to act as a bulwark against the destructive forces threatening from the East. In German domestic affairs they must cease to charge political opponents with unpatriotic motives. He was struck with the contrast in England, where "the trade unions had asked the old Tory leader (sic), Lord Lansdowne, to address them." 3. Prince Max is President of the Upper House of the Baden Legislature. In December 1917 he opened the session with a speech on the situation, in which he made several rather rash statements. He spoke of the "secret plans of our enemies for plunder," which had been revealed by publications from the Russian archives. He talked of those who "sought to unite pacifism as a phrase with the policy of conquest by force.