FULL TIME JOB

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 May 1937, Page 6

FULL TIME JOB

EMPEROR SEEKS A WIFE. “Wanted, a beautiful girl willing to become wife to an Emperor. Must be prepared to provide an heir. Qualifications of wealth or birth unnecessary. Applications from any country in the world will be considered. Apply to the Emperor Kang Teh, the Imperial Palace, Manchukuo, enclosing photograph.” No, that advertisement has not really appeared in the “Situations Vacant” columns just yet, says the “San Francisco Chronicle.” But it very easily might. The studious thirty-years-old Emperor of Manchukuo has start- 1, ed a world-wide search for a suitable mate. His Premier has frankly declared that -if no agreeable woman is forthcoming from the East, attention will be turned to America, and then perhaps to England. Agents were recently sent through Manchuria with instructions to choose from poor families a hundred of the most beautiful girls between fifteen and twenty years of age and bring them back to Changchun, the capital, as candidates for a place of honour in the household.

By return, an Oriental beauty chorus waited on the young Kang Teh. He inspected them shyly, inquired after their health, but decided that none of them was quite what he want ed. Under the laws of his country, any child can be made heir, whether by first wife or concubine, but the mother usually assumes the place of Empress. Yet Kang Teh has already discovered wife-hunting to be a fulltime job. For months past he has been inspecting sheaves of photographs sent by his agents, and interviewing some of the more probable among the prospective candidates.

He is not necessarily hard to please. But he seeks someone who will be certain will give him an. heir. The girl who can fill the' bill will live in luxury, for the Imperial Palace is both rich and spacious, luxuriously furnished, and equipped with electric light, radio, telephones—and a bathroom on every floor!

The one snag is that Kang Teh has already had more wives than empires—and he has had three empires. At the age of three, by virtue of his Manchu ancestors, he ascended the Dragon ’Throne at Peking. When revolution came, he slipped out of the palace and mingled unrecognised with the people who were shouting for his blood.

Then he signed a treaty, by which he became Manchu Emperor, with a pension of £400,000 a year. Never receiving a penny of the money, he left that job when someone sent him a basket of fruit containing a bomb. And he has treated his wives in no more kindly fashion than his empires have treated him.

When lie left China to become first Manchurian President, he left liis first consort behind in Tientsin. Soon she found herself penniless and appealed to her former lover for protection. Kang Teh’s brother promptly replied, ordering her to cease troubling his former Celestial Majesty with mundane requests, and concluded, “The President wishes to confer on you the honour of death.”

In’ short, the lovely young girl of twenty was being asked to kill herself. They were somewhat surprised when she refused. Another bride, backed by powerful Chinese politicians, attempted to poison him, and was only saved from gaol by stealing one of the Imperial motor-cars and making a swift'escape. As a boy* of eighteen, Kang Teh married a charming aristocrat, the Princess Kuo Shia-Sa. They are still together, but she, like the rest, has failed to supply him with “honourable descendants.” Another wife not only failed- to make him a father, but threatened an action for divorce. The scandal was averted at the last, moment only by a settlement out of court which gave her £1,600 a year for life. Wives have always cost Kang Teh a good deal of money, and a good deal of worry. But he is still looking for them!