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Show THEY LOVE A LORD. The supposed admiration of the Kng-lish Kng-lish people for the nobility has frequently fre-quently been remarked in the United States, but we notice that whenever a lordling. great or small, conies over the water in quet of a wife with a wealthy papa, a grand rush is made for him by the mothers of young women who are willing to exchange cash for titles. There will be rich ' pickings in this country after the war for impecunious noblemen, without a doubt, tor "little Tommy" does not love a lord any better than some of the people of republican America. As a matter of fact so great is the admiration of some Americans that bogus noblemen find us easy victims. The indictment of Kdmond Rousselot in Xew York uncovers a story, which proves the truth of our assertion. This .. a week telephone operator, posing as "His Kxcoilcncy. the Marquis Uousselot de ( asteilot, confidential representative of His Majesty, King Alfonso .XIII of Spain." had no difficulty in opening negotiations with tlie banking house of .1. P. Morgan i Co. for a loan nf OOh.uiIO for Spain by promising that the Dons would enter the war on the side of the entente allies, and flashing some credentials which evidently were not closely examined. The bogus Spanish grandee "touched" W. )',. ). Stokes, owner of the Ansonia hotel, for -iO0 and borrowed .$ 1 m.Omo of a society woman on worthless securities. .Mr. Stokes has been sup) osed to be worldly tvio. hut he u eager to accommodate his friend, the marquis, the personal representative repre-sentative of the king of Spain. It was Stokes also who introduced the schemer at the Morgan banking hoii'-c. where there does not seem to have been any disposition to doubt the authenticity of the credent ials. of the impostor. At auv rate negotiations for the loan of fitly millions to the king of Spain were solemnly begun and the state department was consulted ns is usual in stu h cases at the present time. Secretary Lansing suggested that the proposed luan be taken up through the regular government channels, but the " inarqiiis " insisted that gicat secrecy ni nst be observed, explaining that the loan was to bi' made personally to King Alfonso ill return for bringing Spain into the wnr. So 11 egi,t iat ions went forward v.'Mli the Morgans. I'.ut "His KTxcellciicy ' ' hud ton many irons in the fire and the attention of the grand jury was directed to him. It so happened that the foreman of the jurv was an employee of the Moignu banking house who knew nunc or less about, Ihe negot iat ions lor the .",( 1,1 il K I , . noil, no ic t men t and exposure followed as a matter ot' course and Kdniond uus-.elul. was shoiu ot' his bogus letters and locked up. The story is highly amusing. The Xew Yorkers were so easy that a large red seal impressed by the stamp of the register of deeds of Westchester county looked like a royal seal, while a crest cut from the advertisement adver-tisement of a furrier was accepted as the real tiling, and one of our pet weaknesses weak-nesses has been betrayed to a scoffing world. If a fellow without a handle to his name had attempted to negotiate with Morgan for $50,000,000, or even a very much smaller sum. his antecedents would have been looked up or he would have been handed over to the police without ceremony, if he escaped being kicked into the street. Stokes would not have pressed $o00 upon such an ordinary or-dinary guest at the Ansonia, while the society woman and the actress mentioned men-tioned in the dispatches would have turned up their noses upon the advances of such a plain citizen. But the bogus title turned the trick, and if the impostor im-postor had not tried to cover too much territory he might have made a very-respectable very-respectable killing while browsing around among the Xew York title hunters. |