Ducal Dodge

The only private army in the British Empire is the Army of Atholl, three Scots infantry companies permitted the Dukes of Atholl by Queen Victoria.* Last July their commander, tall, hearty Sir John George Stewart-Murray, eighth Duke of Atholl. "richest man in Scotland." began to sell what he vowed were not lottery tickets. Proceeds of the sale, his agents announced, "shall be disposed of in such manner as the Duke of Atholl shall, in his absolute and uncontrolled discretion, think fit." Some 337,000 Englishmen had enough faith in the Duke of Atholl's dis cretion to pay ten shillings each for tickets. From the proceeds His Grace last month gave -L-60,000 ($290,000) to British chari ties, chiefly hospitals. The remaining -L-36,000 he distributed as 748 "gifts" to certain ticket holders whom he vowed were not lottery winners. The biggest gift was -L-2,000, the smallest -L-10. Asked on what system he had selected the 748 beneficiaries, the Duke cheerfully replied, "It was an idea from Heaven."

While all Britain chuckled at how he had outwitted the strict British law against lotteries, Scotland Yard men walked into battlemented Blair Castle for a conference with the sporting Duke. Last week in Bow Street Police Court the Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Edward Hale Tindal Atkinson, applied for a summons against the Duke of Atholl for violation of the lotteries act. The judge granted it, calling His Grace before the grimy Bow Street bar next week to answer to the Crown for his wit. Atholl had popular British sympathy last week because everyone knew he had really been trying to save for British charities some of the vast sum that annually goes across the Irish Sea to the perfectly legal Irish Free State Hospitals Sweepstakes.

*The Atholl Highlanders, numbering about 500 Murraymen, get into their uniforms for great occasions but have no barracks or permanent organization in peacetime. In Wartime the Dukes of Atholl have the feudal right to levy additional troops from the Clan, uniform and equip them. They wear the Murray of Atholl tartan of blue and green squares, divided by thick black bands shot with red.

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