The Seaforth News, 1953-07-16, Page 6veless oycd riage
Led To Two Wars
Back in the heyday of Queeu
Victoria; a yOUng and beautiful
princesheld a position in ro-
mantic public attention akin te
that of our Own Princess 1VIargar-
et. The adorable Princess Vicky
was Queen Vieteria's eldest
daughter . and scarcely out of
the nursery before gossips were
speculating on the identity of
her future husband,
Only the best and biggest heart
in the world, the Prince Con-
sort said, was to be good enough
for his dee): little Vicky. Yet
the sombre truth—deliberately
played down by historians—
that she was harshly sent into
bondage and treated like an
Eastern slave , . . the last prin.
cess in Great Britain whom stern
protocol condemned to the rig-
ours of a loveless marriage ni
State. •
Nothing good ever came of el
Looking back ruefully, there are
elder members of the Royal
Family who admit that Vicky's
wedding led only to hatred and
bloodshed, culminating in the
horrors of two world wars. Her
tears at the altar, indeed, inau-
gurated the chain of events that
led to Hitler. • •
Scowling Suitor
At the same time, her tragic
marriage taught Court conven-
tion an unforgettable lesson. It
is due to Princess Vicky that out.
young Queen to -day enjoys un-
alloyed happiness with the man
of her choice. And when Princess
Margaret marries, one may be
sure that no consideratinn wjli
matter but love.
Come back with nie then to
that sultry summer when scowl-
ing Prince Frederick William of
Prussia arrived in England
coolly determined to make Vielty
his bride. She was then mile'
child of eleven and he had reach-
ed man's stature; but he shrewd-
ly assessed the political advan-
tages that such a match might
bring his eountry, writes Helm -
Cathcart in 'Tit -Bits,"
As she first took his hand and
gazed up at his harsh, sabre -
slashed face, his cruel Prussian
lips, Vicky shivered uncontrol-
.ably. Too often since then the
world has recognized that :gime
cold -faced, ruthless glare In the
fanatic Nazi.
Ostensibly, Priem- Freuerick
was here for the Great Exhibi-
doe. But he lost no time in
speaking to Queen Victoria. -t
dearly want to belong to you'
family," he explained.
Secret Notes
The Queen joyously reetiedee
his words in her journal and that
self -same night secret notes were
exchanged between Stinker poli-
ticians. If the heir to the Prus-
sian throne Were married to the
eldest daughter of Queen Vic-
toria, Britain would be in no po-
sition to oppose Gertme were rif
aggression.
From first to last, Renee So
Vicky was never coesolted. Her
first clue to her fate came when
her governess set her the tosk
reading German history and
translating German memoirs
Proposal Ahem was none. unlese
it was during • Prince Frede rid's
brief stay at Balmoral.
Riding down Glen Gernock, the
Prince dismounted and gallant-
ly gathered her a sprig of white
heather, And unaccountably, .once
again the youthful Vicky shud-
dered. For white heather in the •
Royal Family had long been re-
garded not as OA augury of good •
luck but as a sign of atelier
tune!
Desperately she tried to shrug
aetele these forebodings. Tlie en -
gagement was anneunced
she WAS only fifteen. Bravely ehe
smiled al the cheering eroWds, so
that they might have no know-
ledge of her shrinking 1101,11.
On her wedding morn, within
a few weeks of her seventeenth
birthday, her unilateral reserve
broke in a flood of tears. "I think
it will kill me!" she wept..
After ,the ceremony, she flung
herself into her mother'arms
like a frightened child. Guests
rioted the strange impulse that
made her wear a black veil with
her going away outfit, end per-
haps this tiny gesture of deflanee
communicated itself to the wait-
ing erdwds.
Failing to make himself popu-
lar, the bridegroom was still
called "the foreigner." For a
moment, fists were shakeu, Theo
the crowds took up a strange
chant, "Be good to her,'they
yelled, " we'll have her back!"
And to Princess Vicky sailed
away from her native land to
betionie a foreigner herself at
formal Potsdam. "I' have only
one warm spot in me, and that
is my heart." she murmured,
shivering with cold, when wel-
comed by the hard -Faced Emp-
ress of Prussia.
Soon she noticed that her
hands and feet always felt 'like
cold lead" in the chine- rooms of
the austere German castle She
had been allotted a bedroom next
dour to the death chamber of
Frederick 11 and the door
had an uncanny trick of swing-
ing open without apparent cause.
HomesiA, she sadly wrote that
she felt "dull, melamine\ and
queer." • . •
Then her baby was born and
brought to her by a nurse who
tried to prevent • her lifting the
lacy shawl. At once she sew the
truth. Her son had a Withered
R1111.
Nightmare Union
There began a new fear in the
unhappiness of this nightmare
marriage—the abiding. fear lest
her son, with his warped and
twisted arm, should grow were -
ed and twisted m charecier.
Then came the first terrible
cycle of German wars, fulfilment
of those dread plots in which she
had been the unwitting pawn.
Against Denmark, Austria,
France, rode the Prussian hordes
• '..,•••••••-,e..--ts.-;:r,..eserrr.,e,s,sees,seeetetee
, , • , • .
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10,
Valiant Dutch Fight On—Operating a crane from a floating barge, workmen erect a new dike
from the muddy soil of a farm near Schelphoek, The Netherlands, which has been inundated
since lost February's disastrous floods. The old dike, severed by the sea, can be seen in the back.
ground. Until the new dike is in place the'sea will come and go with the tides.
. . till it seemed her husband
was never out of uuiform. The
Franco-Prussian war brought a
bitter wave of anti -English feel-
ing She tried to take up hospi-
tal work, but her serviette were
refused tor fear of her English
sympathies. Unwittingly, she
spoke of England as "home" and
aroused a. fierce tide of hatred.
Man of Hate
Her own SAA, William, seemed
to lead the tide of animosity
against her. Poor Vicky! With
his withered arm, he was the
man of hate who became Kaiser
Wilhelm- II—and precipitated the
• world into the agony of the I 91 4-
18 war.
But fate had • not finished with
Vicky. Her youngest and favour-
ite son died in babyhood, Years'
later, setting a finger to her lips,
she took an English friend up the
palace stairs and showed her a
nursery with clothes and toys laid
ready as if for a living child—
and in the cot was a waxen image
of the baby she had lost.
Vicky died at sixty—some said
of a broken heart. And since that
day no girl born to the Royal
Family has (Wer been named
Victoria.
Mystenes Of " Drowned "
Cities Revealed
.•- . •
111 the year 373 B.C. a tidal
wave engulfed the Greek city of
Hence and never receded. Recent-
ly a party of French underwater
explorers descended to it and
wandered about i1.8 mrie, sea-
weed -covered streets.
Hence has lain • untie,. the
water,, of the Gulf of Corinth for
more than 2,300 years. itis esti-
mated that 30.000 people once
lived in the city, which was the
seat of government for the
Achaean League, a powerful 1,7011-
federatioe of ritiee in the days
when Greece wily at the height
of her power.
It had fine buildiese, sporting
arentie, and temple,, The French
divers examined these to find out
whether parts could be raised to
the -surface,
Soviet scieutiets have diaiuser•
set a submerged city ie J3aku
Bar, on the mien of the Caspian
Sca. •
They hauled tip huge blocks of
masonry believed to haste (arm-
. ed part Of a tire -worshippers
temple and on which strange
sembols are inscribed..
Beneath the Wairi.,;
Plight—Mounted in the 15).foot pressure tunnel at Langley
Aeronautical Laboratory, a scale model plane is about to be
tested For stability and control, The tunnel will be filled with
e rushing torrent of air speuding in 200 miles per hour, Pressur
will increase two and one-third times,
have been explored, toe wa!ls of
which are six feet thick, sug•
gesting that they were nem part
of a fortified citadel.
'House of the Dead"
Legend has it that the richest
submerged city in the world is
that of iteetalimen, wheel lies off
the island of Ponape, in the
Pacific Ocean.
Deep down in the transparent
waters can be even stone arches
and pillars, enormous heaps ni
--dreesed stone ruins, fallen mono -
lithe, and carved etene tablets.
•
According to the inhabitants of
Ponape vast treaeure lies buried
itt the ruins .of Mcialimen, hidden
vault, before 'hi 1' men ever
eeiled the Pacific.
They also. speak of the ttjeouee-
et the Dead,•' in wheel lie 101,000
• Mime/lifted forms of the t;lyes
most tamous 111011, tetaih beets rest-
ing in a watertight coffin.
Britain, too, has its sublet:: god
cake Ravensper was one of
them. The history 01 Enteend tells
that the Butte of Lancaster,
afterwards Honey IV, landed at
Ravenspnr, in 'Yorkshire, in 1399.
wae 5 thriving port, large
.ugh to. excite the jealousy of
the "good men o1 Grimsby," who
tinvieil the proeperity of their op-
posite and tieirehleper on the
la umber.
They little dreamee hew :Joon •
the tta would avenge their griefv-
mime by swellow ag i!p every
vestige of Raven:gest.
When -Hulk large and thriving
ae it now fa paid e 100 for its
eharter navenepur, being bigger
than 1111, meld e2e4.
Ravenspur aid
aleme To the eve bottom also
'went the towns of
ThArle.thorpe, -.Friemerste Po
fleet., and Upeel.
Piety -two Chtnriteti
Ofe the Suffolk meet lice eels -
merged the famous "ghoet" town
of Dunieeph. On the cliffitop
stand .a tArlore rums, re-
mains of the town's last- ('hut'ch.
• At one time Dulwich could
hem two 1VI,Pes, a bishop, and
• was so simile that the very sight
of , its walls anti battlemeets
ettused the Earl of Leiveafee. to
deapair beeleging. it.
The chronicler records that
was Surrounded "by a stone wall
end brazen gates" and ..ehat it
possessed flfty-two 1l1'l'11511,
chapele, hoepitale, a Icing's pal-
ace, and it. own mine
But ;de hundred years apo 11
doom was estaled, for the sea be-
gan to claim it, and by the mid-
dle or the sixteenth century only
Egyptian Strong Man and Friend—Egypt s Premier. Mohammed
Naguib, left, chats casually with the country's "number two"
man, lt.-Col. Goma! Abdel -Nasser at a recent party in Cairo..
Abdel -Nasser has emerged as the possible real power
behind the recent Egyptian revolution of which Naguib is the
papular symbol.
nne quarter of the town remain•
A ed
despairing appeal was made
to Queen Elizabeth to check the
menace of the ocean, but long
before that Canute had proved
the ocean to be no respecter of
monarchs,
The sea rolled remorselessly
on, and two hundred and fifty
years ago the town hall vanished
beneath the ocean.
Not tar distant was the thriv-
ing seaport of Orwell, which used
to stand on a• neck of land jut-
ting out two miles farther to sea
than the present coastline of
Essex.
That, too, is how at the bottom
of the sea.
Lost Girl 'Was
Brought Up By Bear
-•
have you ever heard of a
woman. fighting for her life up a
tree with a tiger? It happened to
Mrfe Olive Smythies, wife of a
forestry (neer ii India, when
she and her husband perched
111 seate slung in trees about -fifty
yards apart in the jungle, to
await the tigeret return to Ile
kill.
When it appeared, both fired,
wounding it. It charged the tree,
roaring hideously, and climbed up
it like a cat. Reaching the seat
the tiger seized the front part of
It in its teeth, so that •Ners.
Smythies had only a very small
space al the back to stand on.
She pushed the rifle into the
enraged beast's open mouth, pull-
ed the trigger; and kept on pa-
ins!. But nothing happened. It
WAS1 misfire 1
The tiger had one end of her
rifle, she the ether. The barrel
was eaught between its fangs, All
she could think of was to with-
drew the barrel, if possible, and
-hil the tiger 051 the bead with
the stock. •
She was about to try this when
the tiger's paws came right
through the siring seat. Next
mement the snarling beast was
grabbing at her legs. She stepped
backwards, forgetting she.was th
a tree, told somersaulted to the
ground,
Running frantically, expecting
to feel the tiger's hot breath- en
her as it pounced, she saw her
husband in front of her, his eyee
starting Out of Itis head. He had
tired his last cartridge, knowing
her lifa depended do it, and by e
miracle found the tiger's heart.
Never, in all 'her thirty years hi
India, was she so neat: death,
though she took part in many.
other tiger hurtle.
Tigers, she says in a stiering
amount of her life out there—
"Tiger Lady"—have such enor-
mous pewee belting their spring
that a big one, dragging his kill
weighing probably 150 to 200 lbs.,
leapt a 15 -foot bank in one bound.
She once saw a tiger, carrying a
full-grown .bullock, spring 11-
- feat up a waterfall !
No Sleep for a Week
Riding well-trained elephants
on her tiger hunts, she marvelled
at the manner in which they
understand and obey ;the malle-
t:men signs, given by hands and
legs, Commands such as "Take a
long step," "Break down that
branch, and knock over that
tree," are instantly obeyed. She
has seen an elephant pick up and
pass to its rider a role, a knitting
needle, a cartridge or a hall Of
wool.
In India, wild elephants are
eaught in three ways: by driving
a herd into a strong stockade, by
trapping them in camoullaged
pits, or by chasing them with
specially fed 'tame elephants, with
the mahout crouching low an
the neckband and a man called a
pachwa stmsding on a rope loop
behind the tall, goading the ele-
phant to top speed with a wooden
handle or chits stubbed with
blunt nails.
After a mile or so the wild
Welter tires, turns, and shows
fight. The big fighting -fit pursuers
then go forward to titanic battle,
urged by their mahouts, One
Welter attacks head-on, with
tusks interlocked, trunks writh-
ing: Others push- and pommel et
the eides. After a time the wild
elephant gives up and turns tall
in flight and again the chase 4
on, again he has to stop and
fight, This goes on until the guar -
r3 is exhausted, sometimes een-
firming for several clays.
Finally subdued and tied to
a tree, he. is riot allowed to sleep
for a week, so that relays of
trained men can teach him to
obey words of command, After
which, in man's service, he le
well fed and well treated, with.
three attendants to look after
hi111;
e/%Orshipped Poisonous Snake
NB's. Smythies had some isee
nerving experiences with snakes.
At a bungalow she and her law
band used On his forest rounds
she noticed a small earthen bowl
of milk placed oe a ledge out-
side, with a marigold stuck in it,
and wondered why it was put
there; Her Indian maid said she
had seee a snake in the bath-
room, which escaped down the
outflow hole, and a few days
later when her baby son was
having his midday sleep, 1Virs,
Smythies went into the room and
saw a snake coiled round the rail
of his bed at the foot.
Stricken with horror, ehe was
able to lift him out to safety and
called the servants, who soon
killed the reptile, one of the most
deadly of poisonous snakes, a
lama, which the caretaker wor-
shipped and had been feeding
with the bowl of milk!
• Ono day her husband came in
very excited. A forest guard had
brought in a girl, about eleven.—
l) sort of female Mowgli—who
had been brought up by a hear
and lived as an animal all her
life. The villagers who killed the
bear had seen' this strange being
walking about nearby, captured
it, and found to their astonish-
ment that It was a human being.
She walked on all fours, grunt-
ed tike a bear, and WAS very
savage, snapping and snarling at
anyone who came near her, In
hospital, where she was care-
fully looked after and fed 01)
fruits and roots, Olive Smythies
often visited her but could never
makes friends with her. After a
few months she pined and died,
"Tiger 'Lady" is an astonishing
record of jungle adventure And
native life.
The Royal Navy
Has Mannequins
It you see a ,British naval man
deliberately rubbing dirt on his
hat, don't imagine he has sudden-
ly gone mad. He is probably one
al the Navy's "mannequine- test-
ing a new article of: kit.
White plastic -topped cape tor
officers and men are being tried
out. If they can stand up to hard
wear without becoming permit-
nently soiled they will be worn
all the year round at home as
well as abroad. Present regula-
tions permit naval officers and
ratings in home waters to wear
white cap covers from May to
Oi'tober only. For the rest of the
year they wear blue caps.
Other clothing innovations are
soon to be introduced and officers
and men selected as mannequins
are expected to subject the new
creations lo the hardest possible
Wear.
The old-time oilskin is being
replaced by a waterproof coat and
trousers impregnated with poly-
vinyl chloride. Seamen's tight -fit
ting jumpers will have zip fast-
eners.
The dtileet coat, too, is on the
way out. This garment, which has
become popular with civilians, is
being replaced by kapok -lined
cotton clothing to be worn be-
neath the new waterproofs.
(1)
rive Wit
Care
In Communist Hands?—Three U.S, M-4 Patton tanks, like the
one shown here, have disappeared during maneuvres near
the Czechoslovak border and may have fallen into Communist
hands, according to a New York newspaper report. The Army
is maintaining secrecy to the diseppeorenice while ct eft:arch
is being conducted.