The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-09
! UNFIT ID WEAR THE KINGS GROWN Heirs Apparent Who Have For
 feited Rights CROWN PRINCE GEORGE Something of the Young Princes Early Career and Later Escapades.
 Other Wild Men of the
 Nobility.

From Pearson's Weekly.
 If the too volatile Crown Prince George of Servia is not called on to pay worse penalty for his escapades than the loss of his right to the throne of the Bal kan kingdom he will be very lucky
 He has proved himself one of the stormy petrels of royalty. Even when a mere boy, when a student in Paris, he was beyond all control; and since he be came Crown Prince he has made himself notorious by his proceedings.
 A full list of his escapades would make unpleasant reading. His life has been full of folly, vice and acts of mad cru city. But at last the climax has come. One of the Crown Princes servants, Ko- lakovitch, died, and it was given out that he had been knocked senseless and kicked to death by Prince George as a punishment for not putting his masters boots and trousers in the right place.
 The Crown Prince denied the charge but announced that he resigned all his claims on the crown, "as a vindication of his honor" Even if he repents his resignation he has a very poor chance of being king. The Serbs hate and are ashamed of him. and will do everything they can to keep him off their throne
 By an ironclad coincidence Austria, who is threatening to. crush Servia, is somewhat in the same trouble as her lit- tie neighbor of the Balkans. The Arch duke Franz Ferdinand, the heir of Fran cis Joseph played ducks and drakes with all his opportunities when he was young man.
 He refused to learn anything, and thought of nothing but how to amuse himself. As, a result he has grown up ignorant. reactionary. and as insanely proud as he is incapable and his conduct in the past has lost him the sympathy and respect of his future subjects
 Of all the great powers Russia has probably had the most heirs-apparent addicted to playing the fascinating, but occasionally expensive game of ducks and dral1es. The most tragically famous of all was Alexia, the son of Peter the Great. He was a drunkard and a gam bier.
 Peter loved him, but he loved Russia better. He asked himself what, would happen to the Empire if his son came to the throne. The answer was a terrible one. By Peters orders Alexis was tried and condemned to death. He was never publicly executed, but he disappeared into prison and the world never saw him again
 Another Russian heir-apparent was the Grand Duke Constantine, the next eld- est brother of Alexander I. His life was full of wild freaks and revelry.
 Finally he fell madly in love with a woman of low birth. He could not marry her without the Tsar's permission, and Alexander, foreseeing that fearful things would happen if Constantine ever became Tsar, offered to give his consent if Con- stantine would formally renounce his rights to the throne. The Grand Duke consented.
 When Alexander died Constantine was forced to keen his word, and his younger brother, Nicholas. became Tsar But Constantine was sullIy and discontented. and gave so much trouble that he was finally banished to a dreary little from tier town in Lithuania, which was prac- tically his prison. since he was forbidden to leave 1t. He died in 1881.
 Historical novelties and dramatists are fond of depicting Don Carlos, the eldest son of Philip IT. of Spain, a hero of romance, who met tragic fate because he was a friend of liberty and wished to help those who were oppressed.
 As matter of cold fact however, Don Carlos was another Crown Prince George, only worse He summed the great soldiers and statesmen who thronged his fathers court, and sought his friends and associates in the lowest drinking shops.
 Finally. just for the sake of enjoying new excitement, he ioined conspiracy against his fathers life.
 He was thrown into prison, and it was given out that he had died. But his ac- tual fate is one of the darkest mysteries of history.
 It is not going too far to say that the Bonaparte family might still have been on the throne of France had it not been for the foolishness of some of its wild est members.
 When Napoleon TIT. was on the throne he made desperate efforts to win the re- spect of the French people, but the other Bonaparte princes led such scandalous lives that these efforts were frustrated. One of them, Prince Pierre, shot dead a Journalist, Victor Noir, and when jury acquitted him people knew that the Elm peror had shielded him from justice.
 England would have had a King Fred erick had one particular prince not thrown away his prospects of the throne. The eldest son of George III, Frederick, Prince of Wales, was as wild and dissi- pated as could be.
 He gambled away an appalling amount of money, and. quarrelling bitterly with his father, was ordered to leave the court and not appear there again. One of his favorite amusements was to help to fas- ten watchmen in their boxes and roll them down Ludgate Hill.
 He died as a result of his own follies when still a young man, and his son .suc- ceeded to the throne of George H.