AN AMERICAN PROPHECY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11026, 14 March 1914, Page 3

AN AMERICAN PROPHECY.

("Boston Globe.")

European diplomacy has achieved another triumph. It has planned to marry the young Princesses and Princes of the Balkan nations to one anothor in order to preserve the peace between these peoples, who have been engaged in cutting one another's throats during the past year.' As the Balkan nations have conducted war with more atrocity than _ has 6\er been displayed in modern times, the lot of the loveless brides seems a gloomy one. It is very difficult to keep the Balkan peoples from flying at ono another again, and the young Princesses will bo placed between them, as it were, in the hope that the rude warriors will hesitate to shoot' or stab them. Chief among the victims will be tne Czar of Russia's daughters. It is announced that the Czar's oldest daughter, the Grand Duchess Olga. will marry Crown Prince Alexander of Servia. His second daughter, Grand Duchess Tatiana, will marry Crown Prince Charles of Roumania. Olga is eighteen and Tatiana seventeen. They are both very pretty, sensitive and delicate looking girls. Crown Prince Alexanders father, King Peter, gained the throne of Servia as the result of the horrible murder of "his predecessor, King Alexander, and I the letter's wife.

Tring Peter took the throno directly from the men who perpetrated these crimes. On account' of iiis more than dubious associations, the royal families who stand for " outward' decency " boycotted Peter for a time. The Czar took a leading part in censuring him, and consequently his daughter,, the Grand Duchess Olga, has no acquaintance with Crown Prince Alexander.

Yet now apparently the Czar is willing to marry his daughter into the illreputed family for the sake of a political advantage in the Balkan Peninsula 1 Crown Prince Alexander's brother George was deposed from his position and exiled for murder and other criminal and disgraceful conduct. The Servian throne has a shocking and barbarous record in many ways. It has been arranged that Crown Prince George of Greece'shall marry the Crown Princess Elizabeth of Roumania.

Greece and Roumania are considered moro civilised than the other Balkan nations, but the attitude of Roumania during tho war was remarkably selfish and cold-blooded. She stayed out of the war until the other countries were exhausted, and then stepped in and snatched some' of the fruits of victory.

There can be little happiness in 6tore for a Princess who is used by this nation in a game of political intrigue.

There remains one important Balkan nation—Bulgaria—which has not been provided for in these arrangements. Prince Boris, the heir to the Bulgarian throne, is only seventeen years old, and it is considered too early to arrange the marriage of a Prince of that ago.

It is intimated, however, that the diplomats hope in a few years to arrange a marriage between him and the Grand Duchess Marie, the Czar's third daughter, who is now fourteen years old.