MISERIES OF A MODERN KING.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3383, 18 July 1927, Page 8

MISERIES OF A MODERN KING.

(By Gardner Calthrop.) Boris, King of Bulgaria, was given a double inheritance when Ferdinand, his father, having played bis cards in the world war and lost, retired from the scene: be inherited loneliness and a crown. The loneliness he shares with a devoted sister, Princess Eudoxia. There are probably in the world today no two’ persons of such high Ime,,rre as they. On the one side scions of Europe’s most 'ancient reigning house, the Hapsburgs; on the othei Greet descendants of a score of kings d’ France. Concentrated regal culture s here; the instinct of splendid and beautiful things. Fate, however, has immured them in ■oimh, uncultured Bulgaria—at least, n Boris’ case; Princess Eudoxia has bad manv an exit door held open to her by princely lovers, but_ she chose o remain by her brother s side. It is difficult to realise the iiitel--1 actual loneliness of Sofia. It is, hke all capitals 011 the borderland ot East md West, all show— poor and empty show The nucleus of a splendid capinl with imposing buildings, beautiful wardens, pavements which London or Paris might well envy; and round it a broad zone of mud huts whore pigs wallow and men sleep cheek by jowl, and where you sink to the knees m lie mud of the roadways. Buffiars themselves, absorbed in a let work of political intrigues, ever on he brink of murdering or being murlered have little time for the aineniJes of culture. A few dry as dust iendemic professors, a lew officers and Jourt officials whose veneer, acquired Paris or Berlin, is usually submerged m lackey-like sycophancy, and one or two members of the diplomatic woikl ivho allow human feelings to percolate through the official hide—such is the .society to which King Boris and his sisVer are confined. “That yenujg man gives me more anxiety than the whole of the enemy s G i-L.0.,” was what General JekofL the Bulgarian commander-in-chief, told me at, that time. “There is no holding him hack.” • ', , • .1 The attempt to assassinate him three vo ;,rs ago led to a new demonstration of his cool courage. He was travelling in an open car with one A.D.C. and a voniiif botanist, to whom ho was greatly ittached, when the car butted against some unseen obstacle and was everbrown into a ditch, while a murderous rj(!o fire was poured in from a ring-of hidden assassins. . Thp chauffeur, the botanist, and the A.D.C. were killed on the spot. The King, thrown out ot the ear, picked himself up, ran the gauntlet of the usillade back to a postal -motor car•umiim up the road, jumped on, pushed the chanileur aside, seized the wheel, turned the cut round, still under liot rille fire, and drove coolly back to Sofia. His clothes were torn, bis hands oovered with blood, and one side of his upper lip bad been shaved clean by a bullet. To a horrified Court marshal who hastened up to’ him he remarked with a smile; “Give mo a looking-glass, .vill you? I have an idea 1. have lost-

half mv moustache.’' This terrorist attempt to kill him was in answer ol tile extremists to the

)oli(*y of barbarous persecution, one mi'dit almost) say ot extermination, vlnch Boris’ Ministers had applied to their political opponents. For some years alter the war a rough bullet-headed man, Stamhuliski ruled Bulgaria with a rod of iron. I saw him u\ London a few months before his death. Looking me straight in the eyes, he said . “1. am a peasant, and the son of peasants. The Bui gars are a race of peasants. Wo have in us that crude fertile trength that reeks of new ploughed soil. ' I am determined to clear my country of the plague of parasites, militarists, and sycophants that feed on the people like locusts.” It was that “plague” that carried him off. He was arrested by a reactionary gang, buried up to the neck in tiie earth, and his head was kicked savagely by officers till he became unconscious, then he was despatched. His colleagues in the Cabinet, his personal and political friends, his relatives, and his followers were hunted and slain as rabbits in a heat. Some of those who escaped swore vengeance. But their*!)first attempt aimed at the wrong man. Boris was no friend of Stamholiski’s murderers. He was no friend of Stambuliski either; hut he admired the force aml of the man. and when lie heard of his murder he was horrified. “For weeks afterwards my brother never smiled; it was months before he laughed again, and to tins day lie laughs but seldom,” was the testimony of Princess Fudoxia. More horrors followed : the blowingup of Sofia Cathedral that crushed half official Bulgaria under its smoking walls; reprisals of unbeard-ot ferocity, murders, wholesale bangings—a very carnival of blood.

.Meanwhile brother and sister lived on their lonely lives in the silent palace of Sofia, or in the restful country splendours of Euxinograd, powerless to interfere, trying only here and there to bring to some crushed victim the light of sympathy. The end, moreover, is not yet.

From time Pj time rumours have spread abroad that either or both were about to seek relief in marriage. Princess Kudoxia has had not a lew wooers. One was Friedrich Leopold of Hohcnzoilern, who wooed her by writing, never having seen her. So ardent was his epistolary love-making that at last be was invited to Sofia.

He turned out, however, to bo fat and awkward, witli an amorous trick ;!' turning up his eyes. Eudoxia received him politely, and as politely dismissed him.

Another was a prince of Thurn and Taxis, immensely wealthy, having inherited millions from ancestors who for centuries had been hereditary’ Post-masters-Geuera! of the llolv Roman

Empire. lie was also too clamorously amorous: in the midst of a Court reception in the palace’s drawing-room he exclaimed dramatically: "Ah. Eudoxia.. '.•omine jo vans aime.” with a thick German accent that sent the entire Court into a (it of giggling. 11 is dismissal followed.

Then there were Bulgarians—one in particular; and it is whispered that his wooing si ruck a responsive chord. Pollteal reasons, however, made a union with a Bulgarian commoner impossible. So Princess Eudoxia "carries on,” with her love secrets buried in her inmost heart, watching with almost motherly care over her brother, .She has inherited the Bourbon nose and the merest touch of the ITapshurg lip.

so she -hardlv ranks as a beauty, hut one forgets these characteristics in her company. Keen intelligence unites in bar eyes with the of warm human sympathy: her Gallic wil enliven-, all l.mr entourage. A masterful woman, perhaps, hut with treasures of womanliness too.

King Boris has now and them flirted with the idea ol marriage. Rome years ago a young Bulgarian olficer, a close

companion of his, married an American girl. She was lovely,, rich, charming. tier mother. Court- gossips whispered, was loss so; "push” was her watchword. But the daughter’s charm

gilded the pill of “Momma’s” social' defects. Boris was tremendously struck with his friend’s luck, and seriously contemplated going to America to seek out another such prize for himself. There was nothing inbongruous in this, for a more democratic pair than Boris and Eudoxia never lived on or near a throne. Both live in the simplest, most frugal way; they live in palaces because that is their fate, but they sleej on camp beds because that is theii taste. Somehow the American fit of enthusiasm faded away. Boris took the only trip of his life, but it was not to America. He went to Venice with his bister. It was a real holiday of sunshine and beauty and joy, away from the cares of an anarchical State,_ and he enjoyed it as few have ever enjoyed a vacation.

There, however, were no princesses there, and no charming American candidates to a post as Balkan queen. So Boris went back still a bachelor to the task that is his in his beloved but turbulent, blood-soaked country.