SCRAPS OF PAPER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16541, 15 November 1915, Page 6

SCRAPS OF PAPER

THE BOSINIAN COUP. KING EDWARD SHOCKED. From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, October 1. Another foretaste of the memories of Lord Redcsdale, which are to be published by Meesio Hutchinson and Co. shortly, includes an illuminating story of King Edward. The King and the old Emperor of Austria were on very friendly terms, and it was a painful shock to the former when, in 1908 "Baron Aercnthal annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, making the Treaty of Berlin into a scrap of paper, and, borrowing a phrase from Kant Justified his action as a categorical imperative. It was on October 8 that the King received the news at Balmoral, and no one who was there can forget how terribly he was upset. Novcr did I see kim so moved. Pie had paid the Emperor of Austria a visit at lechl less than two months before. The meeting had been friendly and affectionate, ending with a hearty "auf baldiges Wiedersehen." Baron Aercnthal had been with the Emperor, Sir Charles Hardinge and King Edward. The two sovereigns and the two statesmen had discuscsed the Eastern question—especially the Balkan difficulties—with the utmost apparent intimacy, and the King left Ischl in the full' assurance that there was no cloud on the horizon. Now, without a word of warning, all was changed. The King was indignant, for nobody knew better than he did the danger of tampering with the provisions of the Treaty of Berlin, and ho saw that to make any change in the Turkish provinces was to light a fuse which, sooner or later, was bound to, fire a powder magazine. Personally, thG King felt that "he had been treacherously deceived. His forecast of the danger, which he communicated at the time to me, showed him to be possessed of the prevision which marks the statesman. Every word that he uttered that day has come true."