MAD MASQUERADE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 March 1943, Page 3

MAD MASQUERADE

PACIFIST “KNIGHTED” IN LONDON BY SELF-STYLED “KING OF POLAND.” FORMER NEW ZEALAND ECCENTRIC. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, March 29. A British pacifist was “knighted” for his work for peace soon after his release recently from Brixton Prison. A "Daily Express” reporter, who saw the ceremony, says it was performed by the self-styled “King Vladislav the Fifth of Poland, Bohemia and Hungary.” A picture of Sir Oswald Mosley, the imprisoned leader, of the British Fascist Party, hung on the wall of a Surrey cottage where the pacifist was “knighted.” The pacifist is Frederick Bowman, who had been held in Brixton Prison since soon after the outbreak of the war. Describing the ceremony, the reporter says that the investiture began with a morning service to the sun. When “King Vladislav” came in everyone stood up. He was robed in scarlet. As the “high priest of the sun,”' he intoned a prayer, while an attendant accompanied him on a flute. The “queen” was a petite blonde French woman. Vladislav called Bowman to the throne. He knelt down, and Vladislav pinned a yellow ribbon on his shoulder. Vladislav then commanded, “Arise,. Sir Frederick.” The reporter says that he chatted to one of the “courtiers,” who told him he was the leader of local Fascists. ' A Polish Government official in London told the “Daily Express” that “King Vladislav” was not taken seriously. He was a son of a New Zealand architect who had renounced the title which he had inherited from an aristocratic Polish family. “King Vladislav” is the self-styled Count Potocki de Montalk, who has been prominent in ultra-Bohemian circles in London for the past 10 years. Geoffrey de Montalk, who lived in New Zealand for some years, was one of the strangest figures to have come and gone from here. At one time he was employed as a milk roundsman in Auckland, where he did his work conscientiously, though finding time to inform housewives of his aristocratic ancestry and his hopes some day of claiming the vast estates in Poland and noble titles to which he claimed he was heir.

When he turned up in London he cut a figure in the twilight world of queei poets and surrealist artists. He was wont to appear about Bloomsbury in a flaming red mantle, and generally to deport himself as an eccentric.