would not go into the factory unless he had antiseptic tablets in his mouth, and one night there was a great disturbance because the cook had come down with influenza, and had a fever temperature. "Out of the house with the beastly thing at once!" Diederich commanded, and when she had gone he wandered about the house for a long time spraying it with disinfecting fluids.
When he read the "Lokal-Anzeiger" in the evening he would constantly say to his wife that Germany could cease to live, but she could not do without a merchant marine—to which Guste agreed, for the simple reason that she did not like the Empress Friedrich, who was betraying us to England, as every one knew, quite apart from certain domestic conditions in Friedrichskron Castle, of which Guste strongly disapproved. We needed a strong fleet against England, which must be absolutely smashed; it was the deadliest enemy of the Emperor. And why? In Netzig they knew all about it. Simply because His Majesty had once, in a lively mood, given the Prince of Wales a friendly kick in a tempting portion of his anatomy. Besides, certain kinds of paper came from England, whose importation could best be stopped by a victorious war. Looking over the top of his paper Diederich used to say to Guste: "I hate England as only Frederick the Great hated that nation of thieves and tradesmen. Those are His Majesty's sentiments and I subscribe to them." He subscribed to every word in every speech of the Emperor's, and always in their first and strongest form, not in the modified version which appeared the next day. All these keywords to the character of Germany and of the times—Diederich lived, moved and had his being in them, as if they had been manifestations of his own nature; they remained in his memory as if he himself had spoken them. Sometimes he really had already said such things. He mixed some of them, on public occasions, with his own inventions, and neither he nor anybody else could tell what came from him and what from one more exalted. …
