After reigning for a period of something like a thousand years, the Bavarian dynasty of the Wittelsbachs came to an end in the autumn of 1918, when, as the reader knows, Germany became a Republic. Whatever the royal family may have felt about this event it is to be supposed that one of its members at any rate looked upon it with composure, if not with relief, because it freed her from the shackles of court etiquette and enabled her to pursue, unhampered, the charitable aims she has always had so much at heart. This was Princess Ludwig Ferdinand, nee the Infanta Maria de la Paz, aunt of the King of Spain. She has indeed justified her baptismal name, and she is popularly called ‘Die Friedensprincessin’ (Peace-Princess). She devotes all her intelligence, resources and energies to good works, and her desire to bring about peace among men amounts almost to an obsession.

In the summer of 1918 a woman presented herself at the residence of the Princess at Munich, stating that she had an urgent request to make. She was barefoot, decoiffee, in rags. Nevertheless, Her Royal Highness, who is nothing if not accessible, gave orders that she was to be admitted. The meeting between these two oddly-assorted women was the starting-point of what may be destined to become a great movement, of which some account will be given further on. Apart from this, it led, directly or indirectly, to a conversion remarkable enough to merit description.