ALL TREATED ALIKE.
The Yprbs Times
211
When Princess Beatrice, the other day, visited the grave in Ypres Town Cemetery
of her son, Prince Maurice of Battenberg, who was killed in action whilst serving with
the King's Royal Rifle Corps in October, 1914, she noticed an old man who was engaged
on a similar mission. One of the gardeners told her the aged fellow's pathetic story, and
she at once went over and spoke to him. Two months ago he and his wife had sailed
from New Zealand for the purpose of paying a visit to the grave of their only son, who
fell about the same time as Prince Maurice, but the wife died on the voyage and was
buried at sea. Consequently, the doubly-bereaved father, who is in his 75th year, had
to continue his solemn pilgrimage alone. The Princess expressed her sympathy and
remarked on the coincidence that she had lost both husband and son in the country's
cause, the former having died at sea when returning from the Ashanti campaign in 1895.
Prince Maurice was, of course, the brother of the Queen of Spain, and Her Majesty has
been desirous of erecting a special memorial over his last resting place. She approached
the Prince of Wales, in his capacity of president of the Imperial War Graves Commission,
and he laid the matter before the King. His Majesty, however, refused his sanction,
pointing out that it had been decided that the graves of both General and Private of the
British Army who fell in the Great War, equal in honour for duty well and nobly done,
should be marked by the same simple headstones, and that he wished no exception to
be made in the case of a member of his own family. Our photograph shows the Queen
of Spain kneeling at the graveside. The smaller wooden cross in the rear is the original
one set up when the Prince fell in 1914. Both crosses will shortly be removed and replaced
by a uniform dwarf Portland headstone of a similar design to those in the two rows which
appear in the photograph.
H.M. THE QUEEN OF SPAIN AT PRINCE MAURICE'S GRAVE.
Reproduced by kind permission of The News of the World."
