CAN'T RETURN SULTAN'S HEAD

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 254, 23 October 1920, Page 19

CAN'T RETURN SULTAN'S HEAD

GHASTLY RELIC STOLEN. Certain French papers recently remarked that Article 246 of the Versailles peae,. treaty remained unfulfilleil, despite, the fact that the treaty hud' fixed July 10 as the extreme time limit. Immediately the organs of the German extreme Left, without investigating, charged' that the Government was endangering peace and giving the French cause for occupying the Ruhr district by -jot attending to the article in question. I am informed, says the Berlin correspondent of the "Vancouver Daily Province," however, that the authorities did everything In their poxver to comply with the article, and if they have failed, even the English, who are directly concerned, xvill probably find no fault xvith them. Article .4. demands that the head or the Sultan -lakatia lie restored to the British authorities before July 10, 1920. Several diplomatic notes had to he exchanged before the Germans realised what was wanted, and the English xvere satisfled that their demands could not be granted. Makaua (or Qnaxva as the Germans call him) xvas a native xvarrior who, in 1805 and ISHU, gave the Germans in East Africa so much trouble that they put a price of six thousand rupees on his head. At the same time, Captain Van 'I'rinz, in command of a large expedition, s$ out to capture him. He succeeded In cornering him, but the Sultan, refusing to surrender, shot and killed himself. A sergeant, one Marltl. to obtain the reward offered, cut off Makaua's head and carried it to the nearest German fort, where It xvas preserved lv alcohol against the time when it could be taken to the colonial capital, Dar-Hs-Salaain, to he exchanged for the COOO rupees. One night, however, according to the German account, negro warriors broke into the fort and stole the alcohol and the Sultan's head, leaving In place of the Intter the freshly severed head of some other negro. The theft might have passed unnoticed for a long time but for the fact that the presence of the substituted head became painfully obvious_on account of the abstraction of the alcohol. The story, as told by the Germans, is that the thieves xvere former retainers of Makaua. xvho burled the head they haxt recovered, xvith the Sultan's body, in his family vault. Vouched for by Sergeant Markl, the xvidow of Captain Yon Prinz (himself killed in the world xvar) and other witnesses. It was recently submitted to the 'British Government for veri_c_clou.