GUARDIAN OF ROYALTY

Evening Post, Issue 86, 11 April 1936, Page 20

GUARDIAN OF ROYALTY

AN INSPECTOR'S STORY

From a perusal of "I Guarded Kings," which is the memoirs of Inspector Harold Brust, late of Scotland Yard, one gains the impression that the author has lived an exciting life, a life of heavy, responsibility and weighted with the tension of eternal vigilance. In the story of his life he has concentrated, so many exciting moments that he keeps the reader keyed to high pitch from beginning to end. As a, yo.ung:man he entered the Special Branch of Scotland Yard service, whose work is political and whose special mission is the guarding of the British Royal Family at Home and abroad, and royal visitors from other nations while they are on English soil. With this task was combined attendance at dangerous times on .high officials of State and other such duties of political watchfulness. Sir lan Macpherson mentions in his introduction that Inspector Brust was his "detective guardian" while he was serving as Chief Secretary for Ireland during the menace of civil war in that country.

In his early twenties Mr. Brust happened to have, temporarily, the position of personal attendant to Sir Francis Villiers, British Ambassador to Portugal, and there in Lisbon, in the summer of 1907, he witnessed the assassination of King Carlos and the Crown Prince, and so "thoroughly proved his mettle in the time of trouble that followed that the way was made easy for him when he decided that he wanted to enter the very carefully selected group forming the Special Branch of Scotland Yard. There he has had under his watchful eye three generations of the British Royal Family and he tells many anecdotes and incidents of that service.

Edward VII, he says, disliked being guarded and "prided himself on being the one Royal personage above attempted assassination." His grandson also dislikes it but puts up goodnaturedly with surveillance. And he adds that Edward VIII "would be quite safe in walking about the streets alone. In my opinion, far safer than you who read or I who write, for there is no man or woman in England who would raise'a finger to harm him." In one. of his chapters .he counts his scars and tells the story of how he acquired each one. A plot to assassinate King Gustave of Sweden, which he discovered and halted, cost him one, and another came of a tracas which probably saved the life of King Albert of the Belgians. Others were received while frustrating attempts on the lives of Lord Balfour, Bonar Law, Venizelos, and others, and each incident had its exciting climax.

After eighteen years with Scotland Yard Mr. Brust retired and engaged in private work. One of his cases, whose story he tells here, was the watching of Carol of Rumania ; and Mme. Lupescu when in 1928 they sought sanctuary in England, in the course of which by a clever trick he discovered Carol's plotting, with the result that the Royal refugee was immediately deported. Another of his cases brought him, a few years ago, /j Cuba, and because of what he learned while there he sets forth the conviction that the Morro Castle was maliciously set on fire by men, probably of the crew, of the criminal underworld working with "Red" agitators. He believes that such was the origin of several steamship fires and in one of his chapters, entitled "Murder Gold," a chapter of particular interest to Americans, he traces the origin of crimes in many parts of the world and of much of the racketeering and gang networks of criminals in the United States to breeding nests of crime in certain parts of Europe.