Ladies CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 October 1915, Page 4

Ladies

CURRENT TOPICS.

EXPORT ROYALTY TRADE. Recent developments in the Balkans have drawn attention to the fact that German princes and princesses occupy the centre of the scene. In Greece the King lias the Kaiser's sister as his consort; in Roumania the throne is occupied by a Hohenzollern; in Bulgaria the King is a Coburg-Orleanist. "And no one, surveying the history of the war," writes A. G. Gardiner when considering this phase of a tangled question, "no one can doubt how powerful has been that Germanic influence in the palaces in checking the popular sympathies of these countries." Germany has ever proved ready to provide a king for any country. Bismarck used the quarrel over the Spanish succession to further his ends forty years ago, and within the last year or two a prince was found ready to put on the crown of troubled Albania, if only for a verv little while. Germany, with its prolifiic growth of royal houses, lias always done a large export trade in royalties. Whenever a throne was vacant or a new throne was established it was to Germany that the people in search of a king naturally went to market, and it wa s not often that they failed to find the article they required, Tho result has been profitable to tho Kaiser. . , North and south there was the same phenomenon—tho royal house in sympathy with Germany, the people in sympathy with the Allies." In Bulgaria to-day the King has to deal with .:v very difficult problem. His subjects favor the Allies. Gladstone's name is still reverenced among the Bulgaria, and to them Britain has long been the ■chant* piott of the Balkan people against Turkish aggression. Then the nation owes its very existence as a Slate tt> Russia, and the desertion of l&i'gfl numbers flf meil Who Were itflt prepared to join imiidj With Russia's etietaies shews that tilt) Bulgars realise that faet, A Gemmti Monarch is driving a liatiofl with leart> iags toward 3 the Enteiite ifita the caiilp of the enemy, fiikl that, as oiie publicist lids put it, is a fact Which des6fvai td ha Carefully i-enifcliibcfed by the <3etno= cfacy lit &il eoiihtrlea, fof it baa ail important 'bearing en the pfttfc Which thfl monarchical idtSfl glftPS in the affairs ef ; nattSßfc" -