THE VANISHED ARCHDUKE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19828, 30 April 1927, Page 13 (Supplement)

THE VANISHED ARCHDUKE

MYSTERY OF “ JOHN ORTH ” FATE UNKNOWN AFTER 38 YEARS ■ • E ag: in John of Austria. the Archduke of mystery, has eluded his rur>-i Tbirtv-eight years ago the brilliant young artillery officer, youngest son of Leopold 11. Grand Duke of Tuscany and second cousin of Emperor Francis Joseph, turned his back on the country that had showered him with honors beyond his years, and. taking leave of riches and rank, set out for South America as plain John Orth, master of a sailing craft. Shortly afterwards his correspondence with his mother eeased. He was known to have left Montevideo in the Santa Margarets bound for Valparaiso, but he never arrived there. Silence ensued, ArchJohn had vanished. What had become of him? Whither had he gone—or had he gone at all? These questions remained unanswered. On the, other hand, tales from all quarters of the globe for three decades and more have attempted t n throw light. But the wraith of John Orth still dances, like a will-o’-wisp, before the imaginations of men. Who. then, was Archduke John, or who is he? Under what hidden idertitv has he succeeded in disappearing and foiling the most vigilant sleuths* Will the true story of his secret career yet come to light? Or ■ an it he that all through the years imagination alone has kept Archduke John alive? The old Austrian Government said that he was lost at sea off Cape Horn ir 1890. Not without prolonged investigation did the Austrian Government come to the final conclusion. More than twenty years elapsed after his disappearance before the Vienna courts officially declared him dead and permitted his heirs to come into his property. Even then they allowed six months for the Archduke to reappear and prove himself, and in that interval the secret police conducted another search. His aged mother, the Dowager Grand Duchess Maria Antonia of Tuscany, never believed he was dead and always kept a light burning in his room in anticipation of his return. If he was alive after July 21. 1890—the day the courts of Vienna derided he had met his death—-where did he go and why did he shroud himself and his movements in secrecy? WHY DID HE DISAPPEAR? Why this young man. years old. gave up one of European royalty * longest names—Johann Nepomueene Salvator Marie Joseph Jean Ferdinand Balthazar Louis Gonzagu? Peter Alexander Zenobius Antonin —with all that it implied, for plain John or Johann Orth is a story with many versions. His conduct has been attributed solely to his love for the beautiful Emilie Stubel, who. though popular as an operetta singer both in Vienna and in New York, was not considered eligible as a llapsburg bride. Renouncing all. he went away with her. That is one version. Fraulein Stubel went with him. it is true; but other reasons than his devotion were also given for their departure. Restiveness among the young Hapsburg Princes, due to a rigid social and political system, was not uncommon. One of Archduke John’s brothers had absented himself from court for twenty years because he was more interested in scientific travel than in court formalities. Another brother had become an oculist, and a cousin was studying medicine. Did not Peter the Great hire out as a workman? When the words were picked up from Archduke John’s lips. “I claim the right to work,” he was naturally pictured as another liberty-loving spirit to whom the ties of power and place were insignificant compared with the right to live his own life. But there were other circumstances. Archduke John was an ambitious young man of great ability and independence of spirit, but he had the imprudence to throw the weight of ids <>wn opinion against the established order. When he was a mere boy of 23 he dared in a pamphlet to find fault with the organization of the Austrian artillery; was bold enough to suggest an alliance between Austria and Russia to counteract what he termed the growing hostilitv of Germany to the House of Hapsburg. For this ho was punished, but later was restored to favour. In the war between Turkey and Russia he so distinguished himself as to be mentioned as a candidate for the Bulgarian throne. Then, in a lecture he declared that the antiquated Austrian military system was making mere machines out of men. This crisis in turn was weathered, and he rose gradually to the rank of Lieutenant Field Marshal in the Austrian Army. DROPPED FROM ARMY. Suddenly, in 1.887, the public was astonished to learn that the promising young officer had been dropped from the army. His course had not been calculated to ingratiate him with his military superiors. Besides, he had been indiscreetly active iu foreign politics. The immediate cause of his suspension was said to be a quarrel with Archduke Albert. For two years he travelled about incognito, expecting reconciliation and restoration to his old place in the army on his return. But this di«i not come to pass. He found the army unchanged in spirit, still organised on a plan he considered injurious io the efficiency of the service. So, securing permission for his radical step, he took leave of Austria forever. If Archduke John had lived in other days, he might have gone knight-erranting or joined a Crusade. Instead he took to the sea to fetch a cargo of nitrate from Chile. Nevertheless, not even a medieval knight could have ridden into adventure more permeated with romance. In every age certain personages seem to be denied to death—particularly if their supposed »-ud be veiled in doubt. John Orth is one of These. The young Louis XVII of France was another. Long years after he was reported murdered, men appeared, even as far away as an Indian settlement in Now York. who proclaimed that they were the son ol‘ Marie Antoinette. There were some forty of them in all. ‘ ‘ FOUND ’ ’ EVERYWHERE Twenty years ago an Austrian official estimated tnat John Orth had been “found” a hundred times since the last communication came from him in the Summer of 1890. But ever the clue was too vague to be followed up. or lac claimant would mysteriously disappear, or the claim would not hold waler. He was said to be fighting with the Chilean f<atriots; now he was in Australia; now in New’ Zealand. It was explained that his vessel had been wrecked, but that he had been saved; .»n that when headed for Valparaiso he had had the appearance of his ship altered and had made for some far-away port. When Marshal Yamagata rose to fame in Japan, some whispered that ho was none other than the Austrian Archduke. Were not his military tactics the same as those advocated by Archduke John? Had any one ever heard of a Japanese Prince of that name Yamagata ? And were not ail th • offers of Austrian officers to aid in the war refused? i’r ■' -his theory was found to be absurd and the news spread that the Arch .i . known as Don Ramon, was living happily and prosperously with H v. .fe and family on the pampas of Argentina, where -key iiad settle i r having been saved from the sea—or having failed •r i when the Santa Margareta sailed. In a ranch house ii. i.i\ i ■: wayfarer found books bearing the imperial arms and plate, t n • : efforts to obliterate a crowm had apparently been made. But l!i»' owr ; ---r wcuid neither afiirm nor deny that it was the Austrian Archdukt. gL.m r.-ng that any one who carried back such a tale would be laughc : at. The official uo-.aia:.-,;! «.f John Orth's death in 1911 and the settlement of his estate put a qun lus on these apparations for a time. But the ghost was not laid. In 1920 an aged sailor who died of hunger in Koine was thought to be John—until Lis Dutch citizenship was shown. The following year John Austria was said to have been killed in the antiEuropean riots in Cairo. Two years ago a Viennese waiter on his deathbed confided to his wife that he was the Archduke. Until proofs of his fate are produced and accepted the minds of men will doubtless continue to weave stories about what really became of John Orth, the mystery man.

WATER WOLVES VORACIOUS FISH. How swarms of little fish, not more than Sin. long, will attack and devour a man in a few minutes is told by Mr Alexander Wai her of the London engineering firm of W. A. Walber and Co., who has just returned from a survey of the Gaiba district in Eastern Bolivia. “These little water-wolves, ” Mr Walber told a representative of the London Sunday Times, “are known as piranas. They seem to scent blood a long way off, and will attack with the utmost ferocity any man or beast that enters the water, eating the flesh from the bones. On one occasion, while surveying on Lake Gaiba, I saw a native fall from a canoe into the water. In an instant swarms of these tubby-looking fish attacked the unhappy wretch so savagely that within five minutes there was practically nothing left of him but his skeleton. Piranas. however, possess the redeeming feature of being good to eat and of yielding valuable oils.”

BEAUTY IN MOTION | “ON WITH THE DANCE!” ARE THERE TOO MANY? (By ‘‘lscariot.”) One learns that the Primate, Archbishop Averill, does not agree with a Methodist clergyman’s denunciation of modern dancing and its effect on the youth of the Dominion; he said at Auckland recently that it was “rather extravagant” to declare that this form of amusement nearly always tended to blunt the spiritual experience. There is a great deal of the aesthetic in good dancing; it teaches rythym and appreciation of beauty of motion, and has been a part and parcel of religious ceremony from time immemorial. But bad dancing . . ..’ The Primate says “To my mind it ; is a healthy and normal recreation for healthy and normal people. True, danc-

ing can be abused like anything else. But there are some people who find evil where, it never existed.” Perhaps that suggests that there is a converse to Augustine’s aphorism, “To the pure, all things are pure. ” Be that as it may, it is apt to blunt one’s theories on the aesthetic in dancing when one watches the genus “sidewalk Sheik” struggling with its Freudian inhibitions while it pilots a “entey” through the maze of the Black Bottom —as danced by the very best Afro-American society in Harlem or East India Dock Road. We have shorn dancing of the mysticism in which it was clothed in the groves of Astarte, but let us not also shear it. of all its restraint. Probably the secret is that there are too many dances and that now-a-days a dance is something to which one can “hardly be bothered” going, instead of an occasion when one, like Antony, “barbered ten times o’er.” The next chapter in Russia will be the setting-up of the things that have been pulled down. —Sir Bernard Pares.

AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES MODEL STATE SCHEME AN ADVERSE CRITICISM. The Chief Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia, Air A. O. Neville, addressing the Women’s Service Guild to-day, criticised the South Australian proposal to constitute a model aboriginal State in the Northern Territory, He emphasised the difference between the various tribes of aborigines in Australia, and said that to put, the whole of the natives in one area would mean a colossal upheaval in native customs and ways. He did not think it possible to teach natives to cultivate land unassisted, as they were not cultivators by nature. There were in Western Australia 24,642 aborigines, 10 per cent, of whom were half-castes who were already in the third veneration, Mr Neville con-