'MR A.'

Evening Star, Issue 18808, 5 December 1924, Page 6

'MR A.'

Charles Lamb wrote a farce called ‘‘Mr H.,’ whoso whole point was intended to lie in the revelation of a name too awful to he spoken till the final act, after curiosity' had been piqued to the last degree. The name, when it was uttered, did not justify the suspense; the grand denouement proved no more than an auti-cli-max; the play was a failure; and Lamb, as a spectator, joined in hissing it. Something of the same kind has happened in the concealment, for official reasons, and belated disclosure of the identity of “ Mr A.,” the victim and tho most eminent sinner of the remarkable Robinson case which has been unfolded, for tho unseemly delight of a crowded audience and millions of readers of the evidence, in a London court. When the case, whose ramifications are still extending, was first called it was explained that for “ reasons of State,” not connected with more rank, tho name of “Mr A.” could mob be revealed. “It was most important that a scandal should nob bo'caused whore this potentate lived.” The name of his aide-de-camp, who was alleged to have played an unscrupulous part in a scheme of obscure conspirators to wring money from him, was also withheld, because its mention would permit of the identification of the ruler. It was made plain that the 1 igh dignitary in the background was some sort of an Eastern potentate. Tho tale was not wanting in dramatic qualities. It involved a plot so impudent, for such high stakes, that if it had been staged as a melodrama the only complaint that would have been likely to be made against it, except by moralists, would have been on the score of its improbability. But it is doubtful if it would have had half so much interest for the millions regaled with it if it had not been for tho Eastern ruler, so lavish with cheques, and made more impressive by the concealment of his identity'. The concealment was not for nil. “Mr A.’s ” name was declared by newspapers to he openly known in Europe aud America and throughout tho East, oaid to every second person in Great Britain, the last assertion probably being an exaggeration. The concern of authorities for withholding- it, in those circumstances, can only be regarded as a most futile absurdity. Now the name has been officially revealed. It will bo strange if the general effect produced is not anti-climax, as in the farce: A little piece of orange peel, Tho butt of a cigar. When trodden by a princely heel,

How beautiful they arc! The peccadilloes of such persons have invariably an interest of their own. But do Indian princes nob actually reigning—or the youthful nephew of a ruler of Kashmir—conic into that category ? A foolish young man, whose uncle, instead of an aido-de-camp descended, like Barry Lyndon, “ from Irish kings,” should have accompanied him to Europe, is made the central figure of a story which he would be glad, doubtless, long since to have forgotten in the more salubrious atmosphere of Kashmir. Too much has been made of a sordid story.