"Gosh, You're Beautiful!''

Student riots, shouts of "Death to the King!" and much waving of big red flags by obscure persons in Madrid last week, disturbed all Spain; but if the Throne was tottering both King Alfonso and the members of his Cabinet wore in becoming Spanish fashion an air of jaunty confidence.

Biggest event of the week: speech by Don Jose Sanchez Guerra, fourtime Conservative Prime Minister, now supposed to favor proclamation of a Republic (TIME, Jan. 6).

In the orchestra of the crowded Madrid theatre which madly cheered Don Jose, sat Spain's reputed richest man, Count Romanones, quiet, alert, ready to jump with his millions to the side on which Victory should perch.

In words too high flown, too packed with historical and literary allusions to be understood by a U. S. audience, Don Jose spoke High Treason as plainly as a Spaniard who is a gentleman (and therefore addicted to splendid nebulosity) can.

"In my mind's eye," he cried, "is that magnificent painting of the scene in which the sovereign lies dying and his servant exclaims, 'Never again will I serve a King whom the worms can eat . . .!'

"I see events marching toward a Republic!"

While events reeled and staggered--for certainly they did not march--Her Majesty Queen Victoria Eugenie received glad news from Pittsburgh. Thence came to Spain in 1923, sent by the late Warren Gamaliel Harding as Ambassador, that extraordinary personage, the late Alexander Pollock Moore, & millionaire-publisher who proceeded to practice diplomacy with conspicuous success by the methods and almost in the language of Will Rogers. It is history that Mr. Moore once said to Her Majesty, "Gosh, you're beautiful! You remind me more than anybody else I ever knew of my wife [the late, gorgeous Lillian Russell]." In Pittsburgh the last will and testament of the late, great Alexander Pollock Moore (TIME, Feb. 24) was opened last week and found to contain a bequest of $100,000 to the Queen who reminded him of Lillian.*

*To his stepdaughter, Mrs. Dorothy Russell O'Reilly Calvit, he left $1,000.

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