FLIGHT OF SULTAN

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 122, 20 November 1922, Page 7

FLIGHT OF SULTAN

FRAIL OLD MAN IN FEZ

ASSEMBLY TO ELECT SUCCESSOR

(DSIIBD PRESS ASSOCIATION.—COPIRIGHT.)

(PUBLISHED IN THB TIMES.) LONDON, 18th November. Air. Ward Price, telegraphing from Constantinople, describes the Sultan's flight as follows:—

On a cold, drizzling day. the last of the long line of once powerful Sultans tried to escape from his own palace. His escape was regarded as a menace to his own Nationalist subjects. The Irish Guards as usual were on early parade at the Yildiz Barracks, when several large motor-cars drew up at a back gate in the twenty-foot wall' surrounding the palace. The gate opened and a dozen men in civilian coetume emerged. The battalian drilling formed up, as if accidentally, in order to keep off any attempts to approach the Sultan. A frail old man in a fez cap and overcoat climbed into a car, taking only two suit cases with him, and a launch subsequently carried him aboard the Malaya.

The Sultan, with the assistance of an interpreter, talked with the British officers accompanying him. He thanked General Harington for enabling him to escape, and said that it was a greatrelief to feel himself in safety under British protection. The Sultan was received aboai'd the Malaya by Admiral Brook. , He and j his ten-year-old son and a suite of nine were accommodated in the Admiral's quarters. (REUTBR'S TELBQRAM.) CONSTANTINOPLE, 18th Nov. On receipt of the news of the Sultan's flight, the Angora Government decided ito Bummon a special meeting of the National Assembly. It also telegraphed to Rafet Pasha, asking how the flight was accomplished, and professing inability- to underjtand the reasons given for it. It is reported that the Assembly will | immediately elect a'snccessor. The Hei* j Presumptive i 3 mentioned as the most j likely candidate. ' j The newspapers indignantly comment oh the flight. The "Tanjn" published! a report that the Siiltan earned off some sacred relics of the Prophet and jewels belonging to the Dynasty.