Seventy Years a Ruler

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 560, 12 January 1929, Page 23

Seventy Years a Ruler

(Continued from Page 22) people. Twelve members of the Diet are elected for four years and three rare appointed by the Prince. The Chief Executive * also an appointee ministrator, his principal duties beof the Prince’s and is called the Ading to see that the will of the Legislature is carried put. Liechtenstein also has a High Court. Instead of Austrian money it now uses the Swiss currency and has I joined the Swiss Customs Union. Switzerland also administers the postal and telegraph systems. The revenue of the country, which amounts to about 400,000 Swiss francs, is derived almost wholly from indirect taxation, the principal products being corn wine, fruit, timber and cattle, for which the verdant Alpine pastures are well suited. Industrially the country is unimportant, although the textile manufactory is thriving. The people, although they used to speak a dialect called Romonseh, now speak German, as do the Swiss across the border and their other neighbours, the Austrians. Prince John is a flue man in his S9th year, though bent and withered and almost blind. His mind is, perhaps, not as keen as it was, but there still remains something indefinably distinguished about his manner and a certain aristocratic bearing. To the people of Liechtenstein he is a great and good patriarch, and he is just as well known, though perhaps a trifle less esteemed, in Vienna, where he has several palaces. One of the Longest Reigns The length of his reign now approaches Louis XlV.’s 72 years (18 of which he ruled through a regency), exceeds that of the Emperor Francis Joseph by two years and that of Queen Victoria by six, and he is thus one of the longest-lived rulers in the history of the world. The time was when he kept a brilliant court in Vienna and when his private possessions rivalled those of the Hapsburgs; but the war changed all this and his great collection of pictures, valued at 20,000,000 dollars, which he has given to the Austrian nation, is now part of the Liechtenstein Museum in Vienna. Like most rulers, Prince John has been .victimised by propaganda of deliberate inaccuracy. At one time he was reported to have rented his palaces in Vienna because he was hard up—almost, on the verge of poverty. It turns out, however, according to reliable reports, that he rented these buildings because he no longer needed

them himself and because he felt it J a duty to make them available at a I modest rental to the starving people i of Vienna, who were at the time suf-: fering the iniquities of inflation. On I another occasion he was alleged to have charged admission to his museum ; to provide himself with a source ofj revenue, whereas it turns out that he j did so to provide a revenue for the upkeep of the collection, so that! charges would not fall on the Aus-: trian people through taxation. Often An Absentee Ruler The worst criticism that is heard. about this Old World Prince, who | still manages to hang on to appanage and title in a world gone democratic, i is that he has spent most of his life | outside of Liechtenstein. But the j Prince was not always old. and in his youth it was only natural that the gay j life of Vienna should have appealed to him. And for whatever reason he | decided to stay in the Austrian capi-! tal in his later years, the fact remains that, even if absent, he has been a model ruler in that he has kept himself extraordinarily well in- 1 formed of the state of his principality and the doings of his people. His court in Vienna was ever open to the highest and the lowest of his subjects whenever they had any legitimate grievance to air. He is in a very real sense the father of his people, and his people have recently given proof of their affection and regard for him in the jubilant festivities which they held in honour of the j completion of his 70th year of his reign.