ESTATES IN BALKANS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18709, 15 May 1924, Page 7

ESTATES IN BALKANS.

AMERICAN CLAIMANTS.

FORMER HAPSBURG LANDS.

A. and N.Z. NEW YORK. May 13. The Herald-Tribune says that the question of the ownership of the immense Hapsburg estates in Czecho-Slovakia and Yugoslavia, valued at about £20,000,000, in which a United States syndicate is believed to be vitally interested, will be referred to a mixed Court to be established in Austria under the Treaty of Trianon. This was signed just prior to the dissolution* of the Monarchy.

The Americans interested are said to be members of a (syndicate which undertook the management of the property belonging to the Archduke Frederick before the war and prior to the division of the Empire of Austro-Hungary. The Americans who received a third interest in the corporation, two-thirds being retained by the archduke and his family, include, according to the newspaper, Charles S. Bain, president of the Guaranty Trust Company; J. Leonard Replogle, president of the Vanadium Steel Company; Frank Munsey, Dr. Hugh Young, of the John Hopkins University, and several others. The right of Czecho-Slovakia to confiscate lands is the point at issue. The Supreme Court of Csecho-Slovakia decided against the Americans, who entered an appeal to the mixed Court. The property in dispute includes vast forest lands, apartment houses, mines, palaces, and farm lands estimated to cover 1,200,000 acres.

Quotation of the Herald-Tribune directs attention to what has been called the most sensational newspaper transaction in many decades of New York journalism— the sale of the; New York Herald to the New York Tribune. The transaction was completed a few weeks ago, the Paris edition of the Herald being included in the sale. As a result, the Herald went, out of existence, its name was amalgamated with that of the Tribune, and the two newspapers appeared as one. Mr. Frank A. Munsey, who purchased th« Herald four years ago from the Gordon Bennett estate, stated that he disposed of it because Mr. Ogden Mills Reid, th*» purchaser was unwilling to sell him the Tribune