The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-12-05
Aristocracy Suffers Even More Than Any Other
 Class of Population
ONE BOY IS EARL
 AT AGE OF EIGHT
Some of Engiand's Most Prominent Children Do Not Know Whether Their Fathers Are Dead
 or Alive

London, November u.-(Special Corre- spondence. )-Saddest amongst innumer- able sad features of this great war is the lot of the children whose fathers are killed. From the lowest to the highest classes the children of the nation are being orphaned. And the higher classes are suffering more, comparatively, than the lower. For Britain's aristocracy went in' for the army before the war. Soldering was gentleman's occupation. First sons' and heirs to great titles joined the guard regiments. The British army, which existed before the outbreak of the war exists no more; 1t has been all killed. There are few officers left, some staff men, 8 few colonels, perhaps, and here and there limbless men who that gallant and aristocratc army, so far as officers were concerned, is no more.
 Titles are passing. Sometimes they have changed hands more than once, as one heir after another of the same line met his death on the battlefield. The Earl of Erne, for instance, is today & child of eight years. When the old earl his grandfather, died in December of last year, his father, Viscount Crichton, was officially reported to be missing, and after a long period of suspense his death has but recently been certified, so that it is a matter of doubt whether he lived to succeed to the earldom and estates, or whether they passed directly to his little son.
 The late Viscount Crichton, who was born in 1872, went to the front major ir the Royal Horse Guards, having all for curing the South African war, when he was mentioned in dispatches and earned the distinction of D. $. O. in 1900. His promotion to the rank of lieutenant colo mel was gazetted on December g. the day after the death of his father, and even possibly after his own life was ended.
 In 1903 Viscount Criehton married Lady Mary Cavendish Grosvenor, a daughter of the first Duke of Westminster, and they had one daughter and one son. The family claim descent from a branch of the richtons-Viscount Frendraught- which title ceased with Lewis, the fifth viscount, about the year 1890.
 Good looks are the rule rather than the exception among the children of Brit airs arstocracy dhough this attractive pess doesn't always survive the process of growing up), but it would be hard anywhere in swelldom to find couple of "bonnier' youngsters than Prince Ru- pert and ErlnceSS May Helen EfIlna or Teck, the little son and daughter of Prince and Princess Alexander of that ill. It would not be surprising, more ever, if the end of the war found that little Prince Rupert, who is 6, in more or less direct line for the dukedom held by his uncle his fathers side of the house for Prince Alexander of Teck, 8 da shing soldier who is at the front with lis regiment the famous "Blues" Royal Life Guards) already has had one ex- ceedingly close call and may yet, by his well-kncwn intrepidity, invite fatal bullet.
 Queen Mary was Teck, and the Duke and Prince Alexander of Teck are her two brothers. The family belong to the royal house of Wurtemberg, and the Duke Of reck would be King of Wurtemberg now but for the morganatic marriage coz tracted by his grandfather, Alexander, Duke of Wurtemberg, who married in 1885, Claudine, Countess de Phedcy, a member of the Polish nobility.
 Prince Alexander of Teck, the father Of the little Rupert. and May, is Al. Born at Kensington palace during the resi- dence there of his parents, the late Duke of Teck and the late Princess Mary Ade-