ILL OMENS.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1674, 14 February 1913, Page 2

ILL OMENS.

' • The attempt on Lord Ilardinge completes tie cycle of unfortunate accidents which 1 ave accompanied the transfer of tho Indian capital from Calcutta to Delhi, the central' act of tho ■ ICing-Bm-peror s ;Durbar. last; year, says a writer in the "Manchester • Guardian." Tho King ha',l hot yet set his foot on tho soil of India' when tho great Durbar tent .was destroyed; by fire. On the . eve of tho opening of the Durbar, on December 11, the Maharajah of Nepal/whom the KingEmperor was to visit immediately after the Durbar for tigot- hunting, suddenly died. On the samo day a police inspector was shot dead at Barisal, in 'Eastern Bengal. On the day affajr the Durbar the P. and 0. steamer Delhi, carrying on board the Princess Royal, the Duke of Fife, and others; was completely wrecked near Tangier. i The mason nho prepared the symbolic foundation-storte laid by tho 'King died a few days after the ceromony. Iho site first chosen for the new capital had to be abandoned. And now the Viceroy has been laid low at the moment of its formal inauguration.. "The Times" correspondent at Delhi wrote at the time of the Durban "Superstitious sections of the Delhi population profess to regard the death of the Maharajah and tho wreck near Tangier as unfavourable omens." It was not without malico that the Euronean papers in Calcutta drew attention to tho chapter of accidents. Wo may guess how their significance. 13 magnified by Eastern superstition. .