Stephen Leacock was an early 20th century Canadian writer and economist. He received a PhD is political science from the University of Chicago. He opposed women's rights and non Anglo-Saxon immigration, however he was a supporter of social welfare legislation. Leacock explains this humorous book as follows, "It is a favourite fancy of mine to imagine this transformation actually brought about; and to picture the Hohenzollerns as an immigrant family departing for America, their trunks and boxes on their backs, their bundles in their hands. The fragments of a diary that here follow present the details of such a picture. I t is written, or imagined to be written, by the (former) Princess Frederica of Hohenzollern. I do not find her name in the Almanach de Gotha. Perhaps she does not exist. But from the text below she is to be presumed to be one of the innumerable nieces of the German Emperor."