KING WITHOUT A COUNTRY

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16927, 29 December 1922, Page 6

KING WITHOUT A COUNTRY

A BLACK PRINCE IN EXILE Paris continues to be the resort of kings in exile, as it was in Daudet’s time, though not so much for the royalties passed out of business by the great war as for those of an earlier date. Among the latter at the present time is His Imperial Highness Prince Bra him Kachala Neu garni, of Bornu, tho great central African sultanate west ar.d south of Lake Chad, in fact forming part of the French African empire, though the greater bulk of it has been incorporated in British Nigeria. Prince Brahim—or Ibrahim—is of pure negro blood and Mahometan faith, and. politically is a French citizen. At the age of twenty he went to Paris and became naturalised. At about that tune Bornu was partitioned among Fiance, England and Germany. Thus reduced to the condition of a king without a. kingdom, he went in 1912 to Algeria, where he was a pensioner of the White Fathers; then to Constantinople, where he was surprised by the Greco-Turkish war; thence to Nice, in 1913, where several sovereigns on their passage became interested in him. Thence he went to Brusssls, Rome, Berlin, then to Vienna, where he was at the outbreak of the great ear. Thanks to the intervention of the United States Minister, he returned to France via Bordeaux, then went to Turns, then to Spain and returned to franc© in 1915. As his subsidy has grown scanty he is compelled to accept available work for his support. Thus the existence of the unfortunate exile is but a long series of lamentable adventures. though he is a man of education who speaks fluently French, English. German. Spanish. Italian, Portuguese and Arabic. He now, deems himself sufficiently civilised and asks the authorisation and the means to return home.