GABY DESLY’S KISSES

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18583, 2 June 1930, Page 2

GABY DESLY’S KISSES

IN SECRET SERVICE CASE. DANCER AND BRITISH RECRUITS. “What is done with Secret Service Funds?” is a question often asked, and tne Prague archives of the former Austro-Hungarian Secret Service have furnished one answer. Some went in an investigation of such a grave matter as the “treasonable” kisses of a worldfamous dancer, the late Mile. Gaby Deslys. The question of the real identity of the dancer has already given rise to several law suits. At her death she left a fair-sized , fortune, to which various connections of hers in Paris laid claim. A poor peasant family named Navratil living in Bohemia also claimed the money, asserting that Gaby Deslys was really Hedvig Navratil. The legal battle has been waged for years, the last incident being the production by French claimants of a Hedwig Navratil living in Biarritz, to prove that the dead dancer was just plain Gaby Deslys. A valuable piece of evidence has been discovered in the secret police archives at Prague—a warrant, dated 1916, for the arrest on a charge of espionage in the interests of the Entente Powers “of the Austrian subject Hedwig Navratil (stage name Gaby Deslys). born on October 31, 1884, in Ober Motschenitz. near Prerau in Moravia, Roman Catholic, unmarried.” Among the documents attached to the warrant is an anonymous postcard addressed to Gaby Deslys at the offict-o of the Prague newspaper “Czech,” to which is affixed- a “treasonable” onecentime stamp inscribed ‘'For the relief of Bohemia,” issued by the Czech Committee in Paris. The police record that “the relatives of Navratil went to Hatwan, near Budapest, 25 years ago. where the father is working as a stbker in a sugar factory.” Another note says: “Gaby Deslys, formerly a friend of the ex-King of Portugal, has spent the war years in London. As even first-ficlass dancers are doing none too well in war time, the ingenious beauty found a new occupation. She entered the British Government Sei’yice and, among other things, became a recruiting agent. During the recruit meetings at Camberwell Palace, she promised a kiss to every man who joined the army. She fulfilled her promise with courage and enthusiasm: every single recruit got a kiss from her lips.” A typist has been unearthed in Olmutz who knew Hedwig Navratil well and had many postcards from her, the later ones being signed “Gaby Deslys.” Unfortunately for the claimants of the stoker’s family, the typist, destroyed them in the war, fearing arrest when she learned that there was a. warrant for espionage out against her old friend.