STRANGEST ABDICATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 270, 13 November 1926, Page 42

STRANGEST ABDICATION.

SIGNED AWAY ON WOMAN'S BACK. STORIES BY A FAMOUS DIPLOMAT* The strangest abdication on record was surely that of Prince Alexander John Couza, first Sovereign of United Rumania —one of the many excellent stories contained in the memoirs of Sir Arthur Hardinge, the famous diplomat and ex-Ambassador to Spain from 1913 to 1919.

"Prince Couza tried to do too much and to move too fast at once," Sir Arthur writes. "He alienated the Jews by a tax on the long curly locks which they cultivated as a sign of their ancient race, and thus made bitter enqmies of them. His vigour and summary methods gave offence in many influential quarters, and in 1866 he was suddenly deposed.

"A band of conspirators broke into his palace, and, entering a room, where they found him with a lady of the noble family of the Catargis, called upon him to sign his own immediate abdication of his office as Hospodar of the two Danubian principalities.

" Enraged but helpless, he is said to have replied that he had no pen or ink with which to sign a document, and no table on which it could be laid for his signature. A Charming Writing Desk. " He was answered that the necessary pen and ink had been brought, and that the shapely back of the lady would supply a charming writing-desk for the formalities of his Highness' abdication. In this quaint but scarcely chivalrous political formality she was forced to acquiesce, while her lover, standing over her, signed the document which terminated this brief and somewhat turbulent reign of the last native Sovereign of Rumania." |

" When Mr. Gladstone succeeded Lord Derby early in 1870 hia Cabinet included John Bright, a politician then regarded as a dangerous person by Conservative society, owing, principally, to his attacks on the Crimean War, and his sympathy, based largely on Quaker and anti-slavery grounds, for the Northern againat the Southern States of the American Union. No Sword for a Quaker. " Mere political differences could probably have been easily arranged, but Bright as a Quaker regarded it as inconsistent with the theological principles of his sect that he should wear a gorgeous Privy Councillor's uniform, and,, what was still worse in Quaker eyes, should carry, although sheathed, a sword. " The difficulty was, I believe, happily settled by a royal decision that Mr. Bright should, instead of displaying a sword, permit a harmless cane to replace that murderous weapon, which was of course duly concealed." " When Lord Beaconsfield was attending the Congress of Berlin as Senior British Plenipotentiary, Lord Ampthill (then Lord Odo Russell, British Ambassador in Berlin) was horrified to learn that Lord "Beaconsfield contemplated French oratory' at the Congress. " He feared that the Britjah Premier's unfamiliarity with the language, and above all his inability to pronounce it correctly, would produce a ridiculous, and therefore a disastrous, impression. Diplomacy That Woo. "He therefore approached the Prune Minister and observed that both he himself and many others had been greatly disappointed at his decision to address the Congress in French, instead of in fcngish. " *Why not ?' said Disraeli. 'French Is the diplomatic language, and it is proper that my strongest, and, as I hope, my most impressive, speech should be made in it.' "•Well,' replied Ampthill, 'all I have to say is that Prince Bismarck and all the other great statesmen assembled here have been looking forward to hearing one of the greatest masters of the English language defend his policy in the tongue and with the oratorical genius of Burke and of Charles James Fox. " 'Any fool who has served a few years in diplomacy can argue in French; but only a great master of English like yourself can afford delight and subjugate a world-wide audience by. addressing it in the language to which his brilliant literary works have imparted an imperishable fame.' "This ingenious argument carried the day, and Lord Beaconsfield decided to address the Congress in' English."