I AM A KING

Hokitika Guardian, 30 May 1932, Page 2

I AM A KING

WHEN ALFONSO SHOCKED

SENTRY,

King Alfonso playing bridge for a whole evening and winning ninepence is on e of the glimpses into the private life of a dethroned monarch afforded by an article in “Le Matin” written by M. Pierre Hambourg, who was on board the French liner Champollion during the Mediterranean orui.se which the King recently completed. “I am so poor now that it is a pleasure to win,” said King Alfonso, smiling, as he picked up his bridge winnigs.

M. Hambourg told King Alfonso how pleased he was to have the opportunity of talking to him, and the King laughed. “Why?” he answered. “I am nobody. I have become unstruck.” Then he spoke of his travels since he went into exile. “I am a queer kind of traveller. I have no passport, - n o papers. at. a frontier I say, ‘King Alfonso XIII., and lam undesirable,’ Then the passport officer or the Customs officer .smiles and lets me through. “The only time I had any difficulty was at the German frontier, The non commissioned officer scrutinised me for ten minutes. Then I could stand it no longer, so I said to him:— “You may like to know that I am an admiral of the German fleet, a colonel of the German Hussars, and a colonel of Uhlans. I am a King. Stand to attention!”

“-My German is terrible, but he understood!”

Speaking of his life when a boy, he confessed: “When I was 14 I had to inspect troops and carry out other duties which devolve on a king, and I was shy. All round were generals looking at me. But- I had a real friend, an old sergeant, and he used to whisper to me what to do.”