"Down with the King!"

A nice old gentleman with profuse white whiskers went out for a walk in Madrid last week accompanied by his daughters. Soon roisterous students appeared, shouting words for which many a Spaniard has been shot:

"Down with the King! Long live the Republic! Hurrah for Sanchez Guerra!"

"My friends! Caballeros!" pleaded the nice old gentleman, "not so loud! Please, not so loud." Policemen soon appeared. The students scattered and escaped, jeering. The flustered old gentleman and his daughters hurried home.

Don Jose Sanchez Guerra was Prime Minister of Spain shortly before General Don Miguel Primo de Rivera seized dictatorial power (TIME, Sept. 24, 1923). Don Jose soon and ostentatiously went into "voluntary exile" at Paris, proclaimed that he did so in protest against Dictator Primo de Rivera's suppression of the Cortes (parliament). Even in exile Don Jose remained the acknowledged leader of Spain's parties of the Left. Last January his followers perfected elaborate plans to stage simultaneous risings of Spanish garrisons on a certain day. On that day Exile Jose Sanchez Guerra was to land at Valencia, proclaim and lead the revolution.

He set out from France in a chartered tramp steamer. Her engines broke down. He reached Valencia two days late, after the revolution had fizzled, and just in time to be arrested for High Treason.

Though unquestionably guilty, the nice old gentleman has so many potent friends in Spain that all through the spring, summer and fall he lived luxuriously in the officers' quarters of a Spanish battleship anchored off Valencia. He has just been acquitted by the supreme war tribunal before which he resolutely professed his guilt.

Early last week he was let off the battleship, ushered into a first-class reserved compartment on the de luxe train for Madrid. There he is free, although well watched.

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