PRINCE IN FORTRESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21224, 2 July 1932, Page 11 (Supplement)

PRINCE IN FORTRESS.

CLOSELY-GUARDED CAPTIVE. BROTHER OF A KING. A modern " Man in tho Iron Mask," brother of a reigning king, and son of a dead one, is languishing in a prison fortress, untried, in broken health, surrounded by armed guards. Tho unfortunate man is Prince George of Serbia, late heir to the throne, and brother of King Alexander of Yugoslavia, the new and greater Serbia which has arisen out of tho ashes of the war. Tho grim story of this prisoncr-prince in a land which has known regicide, revolution and dictatorship within the present generation is told by a representative of the Daily Express. The royal prisoner, though in his forties, is already whitehaired. In the fortress at Nish. near tho famous Tower of Skulls, to wh.ch bo has been banished by King Alexander, he lives in a single dark room. Daily tho Prince is seen by tho soldiers to walk from his cell to the garrison poultry yard ou.side, where he waits for the hens to lay eggs, practically in h.s hands. This "Man in the Iron Mask" whom the public never sees, takes no other food but these eggs which he sees laid, and which he boils himself. Most of the prince's time is spent lying on a pallet bed—bare boaids and blankets —in pain from a ser.ous illness. Serbian doctors have recommended that he should go abroad for an urgent operation, but the "Man in the Iron Mask" sail remains day and night inside the closed ring of fixed bayonets, llis partisans in Serbia, pointing out that ho is the elder biother of the present king, claim Prince George as the rightful heir to the throne, and mutter daikly of revolution. The royal captive comes of an illstarred family, and renounced tho throne following a domestic scandal before the war. liis story beg.ns w.th tho assassination of King Alexander and Queen Draga in the Serbian capital in 1903. _ King Alexander had married his mother's maid, and Draga proved unpopular wi.h a clique of high officers in tho Serb.an Army. One night the insurgents broke into the royal palace to kill the king and queen, just as the birth of a royal heir was expected. They chased the royal couple all over tho palace, and at last cornered them, stabbed them to death, and threw them out of a window. The officers, after a night of carousal, sent for Pe.er, an exiled Serbian prince living in Paris, and put him on the throne. Britain and tho other Powers withdrew their Ministers from Serbia during the wave of horror which swept over Europe at tho kill.ngs. Peter became king, and at once promoted all the officers who had murdered his predecessor. But a section of tho Serbian people objected to the killing of kings and queens, and the country split up imo two political parties, tho regicides and (he anti-regie.des. King Peter s elder son, Prince George, became the leader of the anti-regicides. Prince Gcoige became highly unpopular at Court. Ai.er tho death of a valet, whom lie was accused of having kicked in a temper, he was compelled to renounce the throne. His rights fell to his younger brother Alexander, who came to the throne on his father s death at the end of the war. Since then Prince George has lived tho life of an outcast.