THE ARCHDUKE'S DIARY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 63, 6 July 1914, Page 4

THE ARCHDUKE'S DIARY.

The Lyttelton Times recalls that more than twenty years ago the late Archduke Francis Ferdinand visited Australia and he appears to have found the country good. In his diary, which was published during the nineties, lie professed a great admiration for Australia and its people. The ladies of Sydney, he said* possessed “the same beauty as the daughters of the Motherland, with a Southern grace of movement and a perfectly charming presence.” But the Archduke was pained deeply by British cooking. “I cannot put up with English food,” he wrote. “The English people cook everything as though it were roast beef. Their vegetables are boiled in nothing but water and consequently are tasteless.” He grumbled, too, at “the everlasting pudding.” But if he disliked British food, the Archduke had a deep admiration for British manners and methods. He never ceased to marvel, he said, at the tenacious purpose which had placed the British race in possession of all the choicest spots in the world—outside his own beloved country- He believed that Austria-Hungary was “the most beautiful and noblest of all lands” on the face of the globe.