Evening Star Newspaper, May 4, 1930, Page 94

i | | Ex-Crown Prince Carol of Rumania and Mme. | Lupescu, for whom he left his native land and was later barred from returning. ¢ BY R. S. FENDRICK. { PARIS. DISTINGUISHED newcomer has 4 joined the colony of exiles in the f" French capital. He is Capt. Raffacle Rossetti, an 7 Italian naval officer, who was one of the outstanding heroes of the World War. Capt. Rossetti performed a prodigious exploit. Accompanied by another Italian officer, he swam more than 5 miles into the Austro- Hungarian naval base of Pola on the night of October 31, 1918, and fastened a heavy bomb against the cruiser Viribus Unitis, the § of the Austrian fleet. The ship blew up with a heavy loss of life. As a reward for this feat, the Italian Parliament voted him 500,000 lire, and all Italy rang with his praises. -It has only recently leaked out that“Capt. Rossetti visited Pola a year after the armistice and, learning that Mme. Vucovic de Podkapel- ski, widow of the commander of the Viribus Unitis, was in financial distress, he gave her a large part of his reward for the education of her son. With the advent of Fascism, Italy proved to be too small to hold both Mussolini and Ros- setti, and the latter has just fled to Paris, crossing the great St. Barnard Pass in a snow- storm to avoid the Italian frontier police. He is now working an an apprentice linotype oper- ator in an anti-Fascist newspaper shop, await- ing the day he can return home. THE case of Capt. Rossetti is typical of a | great company of homesick, heartsick per- sons, ranging from royalty and ex-prime minis- ters down to humble street sweepers, who have fled here from their various countries for refuge. It is almost incredible in the twentieth cen- tury, but in Paris alone today there are more thaw 100,000 political exiles, made up of 80,000 Russian ‘monarchists, 10,000 Italian anti-Fas- cists, Turks opposed to Mustapha Kemal, Span- iards opposed to their monarchy, Poles opposed to Marshal Pilsudski, Jugoslavs opposed to King Alexander, Portuguese monarchists and a sprinkling of other races from all over the . Practically all of them have been driven from their homes by threats of execution, im- prisonment, deportation or hateful police sur- veillance. Among these refugees there are some extremely tragic and heroic figures. ‘What woman has had a more awful destiny than the French princess, ex-Queen Amelie of Portugal? Driving through the streets of Lisbon on February 1, 1908, with her husband, King Car- los; her eldest son, Louis-Philippe, and second son, Prince Manuel, the terrified Queen saw three men advance from the cheering crowds, draw carbines from under their eapes and kill the King and the Crown Prince at the first volley. She only saved Prince Manuel’s life by throwing her body in front of him, whereupon the third assassin hesitated to fire. One night two years later she and King Manuel heard bombs exploding in the street, saw a mob of revolutionists advancing on the royal palace—the people had been stirred up by reports of Manuel's fabulous gifts to Gaby Deslys—and got away to Gibraltar on a fishing boat with only a few seconds to spare. In spite of these tragedies, the poor Queen, who lives in Paris in complete retirement, is heartsick for the land in which her husband and son are buried, and one of her fondest hopes is to see their graves before she dies. The prospects of her return are very slight. For his intimates the late Gen. Primo de Rivera was one of the most pathetic figures in this colony of exiles. Gen. de Rivera made his get-away gracefully. He didn't wait to see the flash of an assassin’s knife or give the angry politicians time to loop their nooses. He did not lose an instant sigh- ing over a sullen people’s ingratitude or linger ‘to hear himself described as the wrecker of the peseta. The bullfight fans should not use him for a Roman holiday. He simply took Gen’ Berenguer’s tip that it might be very em- barrassing if he remained in Spain and that the next morning’s express to Paris was an ex- cellent train. Aristocrat, grandee of Spain, gentleman to his fingertips, the ex-dictator arrived here smil- ing and debonair, but he had been deeply hurt by King Alfonso forcing him to resign. He died officially of a sudden heart attack; he actually died of a broken heart. THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, MAY 4, 1930. More Than One Hundred Thousand Political Refugees From All Nations of the Earth, Ranging From Royalty to Street Sweepers, Now Sequestered Within Sheltering Arms of the French Capital—Many of Them Tell Tales of Strife and Persecution, Tragedy and Thrilling Adventure. Mulai Hafid, former Sultan of Morecce, Wwho resides in the French capital. Another exiled Queen of tragic destiny is Nathalie of Serbia, now living in a comvent in Montparnasse. Daughter of a Russian general and & Ru- Prince of the Obrenovitch dynasty, and found herself a veritable foot ball of conflicting Aus- trian and Russian intrigues. Austra was sup- porting the Obrenovitches and Russia was plot- ting to replace them by the Karageorgevitches, the rival dynasty, by fair means or foul. It was the beginning of the rivalry for eontrol of the Balkans that eventually led to the World pect in the eyes of Vienna, who persuaded King Milan that his wife was intriguing in favor of Russia. Milan exiled her to Wiesbaden there, with the help of the German authorities, kidnaped their son, Alexander. Against the wishes of his mother, Alexander eventually married Draga. Mashin, an ambitious young woman who had been.one of Nathalie’s ladies of honor, and played more and more into the hands of Austria. From of Teheran for the fleshpots of Montmartre. After many escapades the fat Persian “King of Kings” was lured into a trap by & gang of blackmailers with the aid of a decoy, or “come- on” girl, and from that moment was harried day and night for enormous sums. It made no difference where hes hid—Paris, Deauville, Switzerland or the Riviera—the rogues barded him with threats that they would poison his food unless he paid more. As he had left Persia largely through fear of being poisoned by one of his ambitious cousins, he found that he was like the fish which had jumped from the skillet into the fire. One day about a year ago the doctors sent him to a big modern hospital in Neuilly for treatment for kidney trouble. There he found peace. Installed in a magnificent sixth-floor suite, served by efficient young nurses, protect- ed by innumerable barriers of employes and a secretary who stood at his door day and night, and refusing to accept any mail or telephone calls, Ahmed Shah foiled the blackmailers and slept blissfully for the first time in years. When his malady improved the doctors told him that he could leave. Some Were National Heroes. Revere in 1920 and 1921, arousing the people to fight for their country. The French and British occupied Constantinople. The allies were preparing to divide Turkey among them- selves. The Armenians and Greeks, oppressed for centuries, were insulting Turks in the streets. Venizelos, backed by Sir Basil Zaharoff, the Ottoman Greek munitions millionaire, was landing an army at Smyrna to occupy Anatolia and was dreaming of a greater Greece. Regardless of what one thinks of the Turks, the work of Gen! M Kemal, Naval Capt. Raouf Bey, Mme. Halide Hanoum, Gen. Al Ahmed Kajar, the late ex-Shah of Persia, who died in a Paris hospital. Puad Pasha, Gen. Kiazim Karebekir Pasha and a half dozen other leaders in stirring up the apathetic Anatolian peasants and forging them into an army that defied the world was an epic. Mme. Halide, & young woman in her early thirties, was one of the most active and useful of all these chiefs. Educated at the American Roberts College at Constantinople, speaking half a dozen languages and with a vast knowl- edge of political and international affairs, she became an invaluable member of the budding government. Alas! the moment victory was won, Musta- pha Kemal began to crush all the other lead- ers, and Mme. Halide and her husband, Dr. Adnan Bey, found the new Turkey they helped to make intolerable. AHONG the army of Russian monarchist emigres in Paris—80,000 of them—the out- standing figure, until the fateful Sunday morn- ing of January 26, was not Grand Duke Cyril, pretender to_the Muscovite throne, nor a long line of grand dukes and grand duchesses, but an obscure soldier named Alexander Koutepoff, who lived in a tiny apartment d Napo- leon’s Tomb. Ten years ago a fight started between two wanted control to support his own claims and is believed to have got 5 per cent of them under his banner. Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaie- 'Paris, a Rendezvous tor World Exiles vich, former commander-in-chief of the Ruse tian army, declared that it was foolish te choose & mew Csar until the refugees returned to Russia, and claimed to have the support of 95 per cent of the refugees. Incidentally; Nicholas disliked his cousin, Cyril. Grand Duke Nicholas thereupon set out to reorganize all the elements of the old army among the refugees, and particularly to create a corps of officers that could some day lead an army against the Bolshevists. He firmly be- lieved that bolshevism would burn itself out in less than 20 years and that if some one would step into the ensuing chaos with the skeleton of an army he could easily get eone trol of the situation, set up a military dictatore ship and organize a new government. He appointed Gen. Koutepoff as his chief of staff and got together a big headquarters staff at the Castle of Choigny, near Paris, Koutepoff, who was a remarkable man, evene tually assembled a force of 60,000 former Ruse sian officers, opened schools to train other offi< cers, sent many spies into Russia and raised large funds. The organization, which was Se~ cret, became very formidable. Koutepoff's characteristic was that he trusted no one. ‘When he sent spy after spy into Russia without a single one being caught, he did not even tell his own chief of staff about it. He knew there were traitors in his crganization in the pay of -Moscow, and so he took his precautions. In all the world the bolshevists feared no one so much as they did Koutepoff. When Grand Duke Nicholas lay dying last -year he named Koutepoff as his suecessor. Given ‘a freer hand than ever, the latter made his organization still more formidable. On Sunday morning, January 26, Koutepoff was kidnaped near his home in Paris with dia- bolical cleverness and disippeared as if the earth had swallowed him. In all probability he was taken to Russia, in the hope that torture would make him reveal his secrets. IN a different category of exiles is Mulai Hafid. Although his name is almost un- known to the present generation, tens of thou- of fanatical tribesmen did his bidding was Sultan of Moroceo some years revolt against the French in 1912, ine Kaiser, led to his downfall. behave yourself, we shall buy of Paris; (Copyrizht, 1850.) Halide Hanoum, the “Joan of Arc” of new Turkey, who makes Paris her home.