MEN OF THE TIME

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 109, 9 May 1914, Page 10

MEN OF THE TIME

Great interest attached to the visit to Windsor in November last of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, nephew and heii'-presumptivo to the Emperor of Austria. The Archduke was accompanied by his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg (Sophie Chotek), who is not of Royal plood, and whom the Archduke married in defiance of the Habsburg "House law." The Archduke as a statesman that his country shall have its "place in the sun." Considering the serious state of health of the Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, the Archduke may at any day find himself called upon to reign as Emperor-King.

' King Alfonso of Spain is popular with his subjects, but even popular monarchs are sometimes in peril, and three attempts have been made on his life. On the first occasion he made a joke about it. On tho third he was just as cool. " Gentlemen," he remarked, " it is halfpasb two, and time we had lunch." That speech showed nerve, and had a profounder effect upon the Spanish nation than tho most eloquent oration. He is married to an English Princess, Ena of Battenburg, grand-daughter of Queen Victoria. Her mother was Princess Beatrice, the youngest daughter of the late Qteen. 1 /

King William I. of Albania has been chosen by the Powers to be the first sovereign ruler of that country, formerly under Turkish rule. It is to be hoped, for the comfort of his reign, that his future subjects will show themselves more peaceable and law-abiding than they have been hitherto under the Turk. This newest of the lesser Kings comes of a house < which has been famous for centuries in German history. He is thirty-eight years of age, and was an officer in Kaiser William's Guards.

The President of the French Republic is described as a "strong man" and a' very able one. As Premier and Foreign Secretary he has made his country stronger in the councils of Europe^than it had been for years, and he confounded the prophets who looked for only difficulties and disaster as the rpsult of his inexperience in diplomacy. He is credited with the intention of being something' more than a merely ornamental President of France. 1

It was in May last that there took place the wedding of Prince Ernst August, son of the Duke of Cumberland, with the daughter of the Emperor of Germany. The marriage, which attracted the sympathetic interest of the two hemispheres at the time, brought about a reconciliation between tho Hohenzollerns and the Guelphs, whose feud of nearly half a century was ended, in the old-fashioned story-book style of the pealing of wedding bells.

Hale and hard-working old age is represented in Michael Kelly, formerly of Limerick, who, at the age of seventynine, refused a pension at the hands of the Marylebone (London) Borough Council. For the past forty years the veteran has worked in the council's stone yard in Lisson-grove. "I'd rather be at work," said the old fellow. " Loafing about a street corner wouldn't suit me; and I might pick the pockets of the Other corner boys. "Your Scotch friend asked you to have k wear, but I notice ho didn't off 01 me on*. • "Ah, you ice, he knows I' don't smoke."