Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 137, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 December 1903 — SUIT FOR MILLIONS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SUIT FOR MILLIONS.

Princess Radziwlll Lays Claim to 9 7,000,000 of Cecil Rhodes’ Estate. A suit of international Interest and one which Is likely to throw a flood o(

light upon the latter-day history of South Africa baa been begun in England by the Princess Radslwlll. against tbs sstate of Cecil Rhodes. The suit is for 97,000,000 and Is based upon

a written agreement made between tbs princess and Rhodes }n June; 189 ft The afTair has caused a tremendous sensation 1U social and political higb places in England. That tlHfc BUlt of Princess Radziwill will be resisted to the utmost ,hy the trustees of the Rhodes estate, w;hlch include such men as Lord Rosebery, former premier, and Earl Grey, Is undoubted, and almost Inevitably there will follow a series of disclosures having to do with the secret history of tbe period of Soujfa African empire building Immediately preceding the Boer war and perhaps bearing directly upon the disasters to British arms In the earlier stages of that wonderful struggle. Much of the public sentiment at the time blamed Joseph Chamberlain, then colonial secretary, for bringing about the costly war, as Well as for the ridiculous fiasco of the Jameson raid upon the stronghold and chief town of the Boer republic, and It Is believed that startling revelations will be made in this connection.

Princess Radziwill has only recently returned to England from Cape Town, where she was released a few weeks before from prison, after serving 18 months of a two years’ sentence imposed on her In the spring of 1902 for alleged forgery, of Cecil Rhodes’ name for sums aggregating $200,000. Her trial for forgery was in progress at the time the great empire huilder dlqd, and revelations made later went far to show that the great man’s end .was hastened by the scandal of the princess’ arrest, and the rumor- persistently connecting her name kvlth bis in 1 1 love affair. He had acquired ft reputation as a woman hater, but undoubtedly came under the influence, for a time at least, of the princess. Nobody ever pretended to understand the friendship which existed between them, nor the subsequent quarrel which separated them. The trial of tbe suit may make this knowledge common to the world.