short time, and that a few have been banished; but those who have been unduly eager to seize his place have not suffered badly. General Cavalcanti is governor of the Balearic Islands, whose climate is delightful; the Marquis of Magas is the King's ambassador to the Vatican; only General Aguilera, instigator of the attempted uprising of June 24, 1926, has spent a few months in prison. Several of the latter's accomplices were also given light sentences, soon followed by pardons.

Tranquillity in Spain has thus been assured for the last four years, and all these measures, which are legal in so far as the acts of any dictator who suspends the Constitution on his own authority can be considered legal, were inspired by Primo's desire to avoid heavy punishments and unnecessary brutality.

Up to the present time, Primo's luck has not failed him. According to the officers who accompanied him, certain of the military operations that he carried on against the Riffians were highly daring. Those were the ones which succeeded best. Every plot aimed against him or his government brought about its own discovery. One of them was so widely talked about that he refused to believe it was true until the wife of a general who was implicated in it convinced him of its seriousness. She told him of it after a dinner at which wine had been plentifully served. In vino veritas. Primo hesitated no longer. It was lucky he didn't.

ENERAL Primo de Rivera is not

GE

only lucky. He is also clever, and his great strength lies in maintaining constant contact with the popular mind. He knows his people and he knows what he can get out of them.

'At the proper moment,' he once said, 'you can obtain whatever you wish from the people by appealing to their emotions and exalting their patriotism. No people on earth is more tractable or easier to govern than the Spanish people.'

He himself is the incarnation of all that is Spanish; but this does not mean that he has every Spanish virtue or every Spanish vice.

Clamorous, colorful Spain is still the country of blood, of passion, and of death.' She is tragic and emotional. Her religion is terrifying rather than consoling. The Spaniard is haunted by ideas of death and of hell. The true painter of the Spanish soul are Zurbarán, Ribera, El Greco, and Juan Valdès Leal who, in his "Triumph of Death' in Seville, depicts a corpse in such a state of putrefaction that Murillo, when he saw it, cried out, "Hold your nose!' The Spaniards may be

sad, but their Dictator is gay. He has been so all his life, and even to-day he still loves to mix with crowds and take part in popular demonstrations.

He has faith in his mission. When he describes it, he speaks with enthusiasm and conviction. In his bursts of mysticism modesty fails him. Whatever his personal belief may be, his outward attitude toward religion is as ostentatious as that of his compatriots.

In public he never forgets what he owes to the Church. When he played his trump card and left for Madrid to undertake his crusade to clean up Spain, the Bishop of Barcelona blessed him. Since he has been in power, in almost every diocese the Church has recommended that the faithful pray for him. El Debate, the Jesuit newspaper, is the sole independent organ which has steadily backed his policies. In his turn, Primo de Rivera repays the Church for what she has done for him. At the request of the bishops, for instance, he has forbidden blasphemy in the streets. God knows the richness in oaths of the Spanish language. Has their number diminished? In any case General Primo, during one of his visits to Morocco, solemnly telegraphed the Archbishop of Toledo, Primate of Spain, to inform the latter that in all the time he had spent with the victorious troops he had not heard a single blasphemy!

All his kindness, however, does not go out to the clergy. He saves the best part of it for the women of Spain. It seems that they took kindly enough to him in earlier days, and now he counts the largest number of his partisans among them. Their influence is not to be disdained, even though, among the common people, their activity outside the home is scarcely understood. Quite recently an Englishman, still wrought up and indignant, told me that when he was obliged to stop in his automobile one Sunday in a village on the road to Seville, the fact that his wife was driving was sufficient to call forth ill-timed remarks from the crowd. They were not satisfied to treat him as a roi fainéant. They abused him as they would abuse the cowardly bull who flees the combat.

Even now there are many Spanish women in a condition resembling that of Arab women. I remember the wife of a diplomat who was late for an appointment to visit an apartment that she wished to rent, and found the door locked. As she continued to knock, a servant opened a peep-hole in the door and explained to her: The master could not wait for you any longer. When he left, he locked my mistress and myself in as usual.' This occurred in the twentieth century in Madrid.

servant opened a peep-hole in the door

Nevertheless, the Spanish woman is practically the absolute mistress of her home and of her children, and to them she gives all her time. Therefore, her opinion counts. General Primo knows this, and it is seldom that his speeches do not contain lyric phrases about the women of Spain, their beauty and their virtue. 'When I see the shining eyes of the women in fields and roads and villages,' he cried in one speech, 'I realize that women are the point of departure for the glorious Spanish revolution!'

He likes them and knows how to get along with them. I was told the following anecdote as true. During the commercial negotiations of the summer of 1926, the French Chargé d'Affaires called upon Primo to request a reduction in the duty upon certain articles imported from France, notably silks. After every reason that he brought forward had met a stonewall of refusal, the Frenchman is said to have declared to the General:

'You say that you worship the Spanish woman, and yet you plan to refuse her the means of bringing out her full beauty, by closing the frontiers to the silks that she loves! She will be told about it.'

'No,' was the General's reply, 'she will be told that for her I will give you satisfaction.'

The General has had less success in dealing with Society. At first he was received as a savior. But, once order was reëstablished, many grandees of Spain felt that they also were qualified to exercise power. When Calvo Sotelo, Minister of Finance, made known his intention to establish a general income tax, the grandees of Spain in general, great landed proprietors-considered this project revolutionary, since it threatened to put them on a plane with the common people. Their uneasiness reached its height when Primo let it be understood that several hunting preserves which had been allowed to remain uncultivated were to be divided among the peasants.

But such dissatisfaction is not of a type to trouble the Dictator. In the game that he is playing there is an unknown quantity which is still more dangerous: King Alfonso XIII has made and unmade so many ministries, has always taken such an active part in the direction of affairs, that he can consider the reign of General Primo de Rivera only as a single moment in his own.

Metropolitana

Many a monarch has been called soulless. This African chieftain has not only a soul, but a separate soul in the person of a small black boy who accompanies his royal master on all formal occasions. The former's official title is Paramount Chief of Akim Abuakwa, but at home he is a king in everything but name. Having been recently knighted as Sir Ofori Atta, it is as such that he has become best known to Londoners within the past few weeks.

Sir Ofori was tactfully plied with questions concerning his dark and youthful attendant. He was reticent in the extreme, condescending only to explain that the paramount and divisional chiefs of Akim Abuakwa are hedged about with mysterious customs. Each of them has a soul,' who is the mystic repository of the kingly dignity and power. The soul, declared Sir Ofori, is a boy chosen before the age of puberty by the chief himself, who has all the chief's dignities and privileges and accompanies the chief wherever he goes. On the highest occasions, it is the soul and not the chief who wears the crown. Further than this, Sir Ofori was unwilling to go. 'The soul,' he said inscrutably, 'is as secret as the chief himself!'

In past weeks, Londoners fond of ceremony have had numerous opportunities to gape at Sir Ofori Atta. He went in splendid array to lay a wreath on the Cenotaph, London's monument to British war dead. Beside him down busy Whitehall walked five tall, dark attendants in native costume- long, bright- long, brightcolored silk robes slung over one shoulder, sandals on their feet, woolly black circlets about their heads. Sir Ofori himself, looking as if carved from a great

block of ebony, a broad smile on his face, stalked along in the gayest robes of all. Over his head was carried an expansive umbrella of blue, red, and green. And before him, bearing a strangely carved golden staff that attracted much attention, walked the picaninny who is the official personification of the black chief's soul.

Later, accompanied by his suite, Sir Ofori entered the Distinguished Strangers' Gallery of the House of Commons, in the presence of a large gathering come to hear the debate on the Finance Bill. This time the African chief was attired in a brilliant brocade cloak, scarlet shoes, and a tall golden crown. He removed the latter politely, as if it were a hat, upon entering the crowded gallery and noticing the women present. But the greatest occasion for lovers of pomp was the Royal Investiture, at which Sir Ofori, together with other notables, received the official accolade of knighthood from the King.

By the gates of Buckingham Palace, a great crowd gathered, anticipating, as all London crowds do, the impressive arrival of distinguished visitors. They did not know that the Gold Coast chieftain's extraordinary soul had almost upset the course of royal ritual. British tradition requires that a person to be knighted must appear alone before the sovereign. Sir Ofori, however, protested that he could not entertain the idea of having his body knighted while his soul was absent. British officialdom saw the point. So, although the crowd had not heard the story, after many motor cars had rolled up to deposit British dignitaries before the palace gates, they saw Sir Ofori arrive in a big automobile, followed by a taxi bringing his umbrella-bearers and his umbrella, and accompanied, in accordance with his wishes, by his small black soul. The two, the African Chieftain and his soul, entered the King's presence together to be knighted, in defiance of all precedent for such occasions.

The crowd, when it had recovered from its bewilderment, settled back for yet more splendor. A company of Grenadier Guards, led by their band, colors flying, marched with brilliance and precision through the gates. When they had

passed, a police sergeant suddenly held up his hand to stop all traffic. Onlookers craned their necks to see what new display was approaching. Then, around the corner of the palace and into the view of the curious crowd, waddled an anxiously quacking mother duck, with eight fluffy ducklings trailing calmly behind her.

Inside Buckingham Palace, an old British tradition was being flouted to permit an African chieftain about to be knighted to take a little black boy into the presence of the King. Outside, a crowd of British tradition-lovers, come to applaud the pomp and majesty of Empire, was convulsed with laughter at the side-show of the pageant, the spectacle of a big London bobby personally conducting a duck and six wobbly ducklings across the street to the safety of St. James's Park.

which the receding tide of history has left so rich a deposit of art and architecture. And now the Italian capital has a new claim; for it is practically the only city in the motor-mad modern world which gives pedestrians special summer rights-rights which may soon be extended into the early fall and perhaps even into October.

In the winter, the Roman equivalents of the Yankee 'traffic cops' rule with a rod of iron, for the streets that Virgil trod and that once echoed to the tread of Cæsar's legions were naturally not built for motor cars, and to-day their congestion is terrific. The Fascist municipal administration has ruled that, since motor cars keep to the right, pedestrians. shall walk only on the left-hand sidewalks, so as to see the motors coming. The rule is strictest on the Corso Umberto, Rome's Fifth Avenue, where the policeman's firm 'Sinistre!' corrects any

But the Roman summer is so hot that not even the rigors of Fascist rule can keep people off the shady side of the street. Their right in summer to walk wherever it is coolest has long been recognized, though the reason officially given is that there is less motor traffic in the summer months. And now the Roman newspapers have taken up the proposed extension of the time limit. Mr. Constant Reader is writing fiery letters to support them. Every one expects the Fascist Government to yield the point, which after all is a very minor one.

PARIS

PARIS

ARIS is still talking of the now famous Procès Mestorino, perhaps the most dramatic murder trial in a city of celebrated murder trials, and certainly one whose outcome has stirred the public more than that of any in the past. For five days this summer, it filled the Palais de Justice with a noisy crowd of eager men and elegantly gowned women, looking and acting somewhat as though they had come to a first night at the Opera. For five days, it filled the boulevard newspapers with scarehead accounts of the proceedings. And it ended by disturbing the Paris public with grave doubts concerning the efficiency of French justice.

Last February someone murdered a Paris jeweler named Truphême and robbed his body of nearly 300,000 francs in money and diamonds. The corpse, wrapped tightly in two woolen coverings, was found in a ditch in the outskirts of the city. An effort had been made to set fire to the bundle. But the wrappings were not very inflammable, and there was water in the bottom of the ditch. The body did not burn. It was discovered.

Suspicion fixed on Charles Mestorino, another Paris jeweler, whom Truphême was known to have visited at noon, the day of the murder. There seemed to be little evidence against Mestorino, however certainly not enough to send a man to the guillotine. In the preliminary investigation, Mestorino himself denied everything, as did his wife. His three assistants, who were in his little shop at the supposed time of the murder, denied any knowledge of the crime. Mestorino's attractive sister-in-law, Suzanne Charnaux, who worked for the murdered man, also denied all information. Two jewelers

could throw no light upon the tragedy. A garage man swore he had kept Mestorino's automobile in his garage to repair its brakes during the day the body was found outside the city. This evidence, if true, negatived the theory that the automobile had been used to transport the corpse.

Then came the trial itself. Parisians, though not suspecting the drama in store for them, were characteristically interested in a case which involved an extremely good-looking young jeweler and his sister-in-law, a pretty girl of twentythree. Crowds jammed the Palais de Justice; perfumed women of fashion, playwrights, authors, boulevardiers, all the curious. Close-packed masses of people, unable to get in, waited outside, staring over one another's shoulders at the broad back of the helmeted Garde Républicaine who blocked the doorway. Small boys on their way home from school gathered on the fringes of the crowd, betting on the outcome of the trial. One fascinating blonde impersonated the wife of the presiding judge in order to gain admittance; but when the usher who had managed to find her a front seat proudly informed the judge of his exploit, the latter protested that he was not a bigamist, and that his real wife was already in his private room. She, incidentally, forcing her way through the crowd outside, had lost a valuable string of pearls, and her son had had his pocket picked!

For five days a dozen or more witnesses were grilled. Each, during the preliminary investigation, had denied all connection with the crime. Each, it developed, had been lying. Now, as one by one they admitted their previous perjury and told their true story, the crowd gasped; for each admission implicated the speaker more or less closely in the crime, and each piled crushing evidence higher and higher upon Mestorino's head.

Often the court room was in pandemonium. Twice the sessions were interrupted for twenty minutes while quiet was restored. In the end, the case was clear. Truphême had come to Mestorino's shop at noon on the day of the murder. Mestorino had wounded him with a jeweler's hammer. Pretty Suzanne Charnaux had stood by while her brother-inlaw finished his victim by smothering and proceeded to strip the body of diamonds, wallet, and even finger rings. Suzanne had taken the diamonds, gone out to buy the coverings with which the body was wrapped, and had later helped to remove the body. Mestorino's three jeweler assistants had watched all this

without making a move to prevent it, and had then promised silence. The garage man had been mistaken, perhaps honestly, in his testimony concerning the presence of Mestorino's automobile in his garage.

Parisians were unanimous in demanding death for Mestorino, if not for Suzanne Charnaux, and punishment for those who had witnessed the crime. But French justice decided otherwise. The jury, though admitting theft and premeditated murder, nevertheless found extenuating circumstances, and Mestorino was condemned only to life imprisonment with hard labor. This surprised Mestorino's lawyer, scandalized the public, and disgusted the custodian of the death chamber, who had been assured that a death sentence was certain and had consequently cleaned out the cell.

Suzanne Charnaux was arrested, not as an accomplice in the murder, but accused of concealing a corpse and receiving stolen goods. Conviction on this charge will mean only from six months to two years in prison, which most Parisians feel is much too good for her. In the case of the three assistants who had watched the crime without interference or giving the alarm, the public prosecutor has explained that they cannot be convicted even of perjury, since French law exonerates a witness who, having falsified, retracts before the close of the trial - a situation which has set the Paris press demanding reform in the Penal Code. As for the conduct of the vociferous crowds who flocked pell-mell to the Palais de Justice, though the newspapers are calling it 'scandalous' there is not much to be done. The Mestorino Trial is a cause célèbre; and as to such, since time immemorial, Parisians have reserved the right to get as excited as they please.

most of those who can afford to travel leave the city.

Yet Peking is not so uncomfortable as many of her residents would have us believe. The plum and cherry blossoms are luxuriant during the Spring. Purple and white lilacs follow, themselves replaced a few weeks later by wistaria. During the summer, rose bushes bloom in the gardens and parks of the old imperial city.

And though the city remains in many respects as puzzling and as passive as ever, it is by no means so backward as many Occidentals imagine. There have been changes since the Boxer rising in 1900. After the anti-Manchu revolution the city cast off her scholastic habit and assumed a more human aspect. The completion of the trans-Siberian railway had brought more travelers from the west. No longer was Peking a mediæval backwater, but rather a complex metropolis presenting a mixture of forces ancient and modern, Oriental and Occidental. Guarded gateways were thrown open, and the Chinese enjoyed hitherto forbidden grounds and gardens, abandoning ancient pomp and ceremony for their new love of sociability and democracy.

Life in Peking is mellow and gay, anxious and unpredictable. Serene and peaceful is its dreamy beauty when one looks toward the bluish gray Western Hills over the yellow roofs of the Forbidden City. If one strolls at night outside the Chien Men, one encounters a brilliant scene of Chinese life, bustling, noisy, merry, and reckless. Color is absent here, however, except for an occasional bright red door. Otherwise the streets and alleys are sombre and dusty, flanked by bare gray walls. Then there are the temples, reminiscent of the ancient glories of China. The Lama Temple, the Yellow Temple outside the An Ting Men, and the Temple of Heaven with its great blue dome and white marble altar, are all a part of a Peking of contrasts, a Peking modern and ancient, at once beautiful and ugly. Naturally, the Legation Quarter strikes the most Occidental note in the entire city. Here the foreigners, though they have to some extent absorbed the Chinese attitude of passivity, nevertheless pursue a work-hard, play-hard life. Before the heat becomes too oppressive with the advancing summer, polo and tennis are the reigning sports. But the only tennis courts are of concrete or of clay, and the polo ground is a dusty field just outside the Legation quarter; for there is little grass in Peking.

The Spring and Fall racing seasons bring the upper classes out to the willowfringed race course. Nearby stand sum

METROPOLITANA

mer houses, some of them new, English ones, some of them old temples, and some of them hybrids of mingled Chinese and foreign architectural influences. Twice a year this district, where Orient and Occident are seen in such marked contrast, becomes the rendezvous of Society.

During the summer months, Peking is hot, and, for the most part, dusty and drab. It is from September until December that the city is at its best, and the social season, at its height. At any season, Peking is a city of many and varied contrasts, which recent years have tended to multiply rather than diminish.

OSCOW

M has

gone

mad over the theatre. At least some twenty or thirty civil war and revolutionary dramas, which opened at the time of the Tenth Anniversary of the revolution, are still playing to full houses. These have given an added political stimulus to the theatre-going public, which is normally larger in Russia than in any other country except Japan. Two notable attractions have been causing particularly great interest the historical play produced by the First Moscow Art Theatre and the presence in Moscow of a Chinese theatrical company. The First Moscow Art Theatre's The Armored Train depicts incidents in Siberia connected with the campaigns against the anti-revolutionary White Armies. Scenes take place on the roof of a half-ruined church, in front of an armored train as it passes over a railway enbankment, and in the interior of one of the compartments of this train. It is reported that effects of the highest realism and artistry are obtained. As usual, the Russians have attempted the scenically impossible and have been successful.

Whether the popularity of the Chinese players is an indication of their merit, or is due to orders from 'higher up' does not appear. The Soviets are supposed to be interested in flattering the Chinese. This Peking company, Chen-De-Tai's, has been presenting an historical drama of the Nineteenth Century and a satiric comedy directed at governmental graft and Pooh-Bahism. It is indicative of the New China that feminine rôles, traditionally limited to male actors, are being taken by women.

41

Housing conditions in Moscow have reached such a point that, in comparison, our own congested areas seem like open country. The city's population has increased by leaps and bounds. It is now over two millions a gain of half a million since 1920. With the existing structures, this allows an average floor space of forty-five square feet per person

an area only twice as great as that occupied by an ordinary bed. It is said that in many cases six or seven persons are crowded into a room which has no window. The new dwellings which have been erected are barrack-like dormitories, all alike, stretching in deadly monotony for miles. If one in imagination substitutes frame for brick construction, modern Moscow very much resembles the outlying poorer sections of our own Philadelphia or Baltimore.

With all this congestion, naturally, the filth in the streets is incredible. Outside the central, older portions of the city, food is bad and scarce; as a beverage, only execrable vodka is plentiful. In the business and governmental quarter, however, things are different. The streets are filled with colored banners advertising theatres, picture palaces, and music halls; broad-shouldered women peddle apples, fresh or pickled, oranges, buttercups, and wood anemones.

In the midst of all this bustling humanity, the Central Committee of the Young Communist Organization has, after serious consideration, issued Order Number 722. This absolutely condemns all forms of kissing, as an aristocratic survival, unfit for a 'society. of class-conscious workers and peasants!' The prohibition applies to any relation in life, and is not limited to young men and women of companionate dispositions. Such is the tyranny of the new ideology. But that there is bootleg osculation on moonlit nights in Russia may perhaps be suspected.

came a queer looking individual with a battered rifle in his hand and a cartridge belt containing five cartridges slung across his chest. He asked for General Roberto Cruz, Chief of the Committee of Public Safety. The doorkeepers, knowing that General Cruz was overburdened with work, referred the strange visitor to Señor Luis Lara Robelo, second in command.

The man with the battered rifle was conducted to Señor Robelo's offices. 'I am Flaviano Aldama Romo,' he said quietly, a rebel come to give himself up.' Naturally they took him in at once. 'You are a rebel?' asked Robelo sternly.

'Yes. I revolted, and have come to give myself up to be punished as I deserve, by court martial.'

There was no time to question further. Though they did not ordinarily walk into jail voluntarily, rebels were plentiful; and other business pressed. Flaviano Aldama Romo was placed in a cell and temporarily forgotten.

Nearly a week later, at a moment when the pressure of official business had temporarily diminished, Robelo called Romo before him again. The rebel's collar was dirty, his suit spotted, his hat crushed. He was the picture of squalor and misery.

'Where did you fight as a rebel?' asked the Assistant Chief of the Committee of Public Safety.

'The truth, Señor,' came the crestfallen reply, is that I am not a rebel at all, and never have been.'

'What! Then why give yourself up as one?'

'Because I would rather be shot as a rebel than go back to my wife.'

Slowly the dejected 'rebel' stammered his story. Four years earlier he had married a woman who turned out to be a veritable tigress, 'un cáracter de irascibilidad feroz, señor, se lo garantizo.' The arrival of two children had not tempered the storm. Romo was at his wits' end. He was a hack driver, and often he stopped his cab on the railroad tracks just outside Mexico City, hoping that a train would kill him; but he always weakened and drove off in time to escape death, saying to himself that, since his brother-in-law owned half the cab, it would not be fair to have it

smashed. The tigress at home grew still more ferocious. Romo bought an old rifle at a bargain price, planning to shoot himself. Fortunately or unfortunately he had made a bad bargain. The rifle would not go off. At least, he decided, he might use the firearm as stage property and give himself up as a rebel, since rebels seemed to be shot to death with great regularity during those days. He had even planned to say that he was the right hand man of Maximiliano Vigueras, the famous highwayman, so that the execution might be as prompt as possible. However, his questioners had cut him short and thrown him into jail before he could do so. Now, after six days in a cell, he had again changed his mind.

He was finally reprimanded and set free. Now it's worse than if you had shot me!' Romo wailed. 'Now I have to go home again and explain!' But he left Police Headquarters, and the police, overstrained and nervous, had their first real laugh in many weeks of tension. Then they settled down again to the stress and strain of real business, a long strain that was to come very near to a snapping point, though not to an end, with General Obregon's assassination.

"Then you are going?'

'Of course.'

'I've heard of Tokio, and it seems a wicked place.'

'Don't be ridiculous.'

Never in my life have I paid so much money to the ticket office at the railway station. Had I known it, I would have invited all the people in the village to see me do it. And the station agent didn't even thank me for my money. Effect of modern civilization!

I believe trains for Tokio are also run at night. I can't imagine anybody paying so much money for traveling at night when you can't see a thing. People are fools!

So this is Tokio! It is inconvenient here. If you want to go anywhere, you have to take either street cars or buses. Back in my village I can get anywhere by walking, and I can reach Gon-Beisan's, the farthest house from mine, in five minutes. I really can't understand the stupidity of Tokio people in building such an abnormally large city. They must be fools. Our village could teach them a great deal. There are so many shops here that when you want to buy anything you can't tell where to go. If you want to go to the post office, you have to ask somebody where it is. Such an inconvenient place! Back in my village, if I want to buy anything, I know where to go because there is only one shop, which sells everything. And when I'm at home, I know where the post office is. It is in the next village.

In the middle of Tokio, they have two places that are called parks. A park is an open space where there are trees and ponds like in our village. I can't see any use for them. I understand that people go there to look at trees, birds, flowers, and ponds! The inconvenience of living in such a place as Tokio must have driven the inhabitants to lunacy. To go and look at trees! We'd never think of doing such a foolish thing in our village.

Facing one of these parks is a hotel, foreign style. You don't have to take off your shoes or slippers to enter. You simply walk in as if you were walking into a barn back in our village. It must be dirty. No wonder they look so sickly in the city! They lack a sense of sanitation!

When I was at the hotel, I saw the last word in shamelessness, indecency, and immodesty foreign dancing. It is nothing like our village dancing, which is real dancing. A man and a girl were holding each other and walking about on a slippery floor. I was shocked and am thinking of asking the policeman in our village why they do such things and why the Government allows it. I am not going to write any more about the hotel because I do not want to remember several shocks I received while I was there. God be merciful to those sinners!