On to Paris

He did not often smile, but on the scholarly spectacles of His Majesty King Alexander of Jugoslavia there shone a great gleam of satisfaction last week as he stepped from a landing pier at Zelenika to board a Jugoslav warship for Mar seilles. He had just finished one of the most thoroughly successful fortnights of his reign. Now, backed by a working agreement with two of his King-neighbors, he was on his way to Paris to bargain and make demands which he was perfectly certain would have to be listened to. But before his journey was half finished Death came, by an assassin's bullets, to Alexander of Jugoslavia.

So spectacular have been the exploits, amorous and political, of buck-toothed King Carol of Rumania in recent years, that only those who know the Balkans realize what a potent figure was his brother-in-law and neighbor, the Dictator-King of Jugoslavia. Alexander Kara-Georgevitch had so deeply the manner and appearance of a small-town dentist that it was hard to remember the three most im portant facts of his character. He was as suspicious and ecstatic a Balkan as ever snatched gobbets of lamb from a sputtering skewer or framed a plot over a greasy cafe table. Despite his pacific pince-nez, he was a soldier who slept on the ground and stood in the trenches of two wars. Finally, having invented the nation of Jugoslavia, he remained a Serbian.

Alexander of Jugoslavia was born in Montenegro in 1888. The most hopeful tea-leaf reader would have hesitated to foretell anything better for him than a career as an impoverished army officer. Serbia had only been an independent kingdom six years. Its king was a dissolute rascal named Milan Obrenovitch who spent his time between orgies in Paris and Vienna and secret attempts to sell his country to Austria-Hungary. The next year Milan abdicated in favor of his 13-year-old son, another Alexander, ''whose character . . . had suffered fatally from his parent's misconduct." The Alexander that was to found Jugoslavia was packed off to military school in St. Petersburg at the age of one.

On June 10, 1903 things began to look up for the family of Alexander of Jugoslavia. On that night a group of conspirators crept into the royal palace and foully murdered Alexander of Serbia and his Queen.

Thanks to the murderers, Alexander's father, the well-liked Peter, now became King of Serbia. Alexander was still a long way from the throne. But in 1909 his elder brother Crown Prince George abdicated his rights to the crown "for reasons of health," when it became known that he had murdered his valet in a fit of temper. Impetuous Prince George, now a retired lieutenant colonel, still wanders unremembered about the streets of Belgrade. As heir and general of Serbia's armies Alexander fought both Balkan Wars against the Turks and Bulgarians. On June 24, 1914 disease forced old King Peter to name him Regent.

Four years of war saw Alexander driven from his capital by the Bulgarians, living under canvas, standing in the trenches, crawling over mountains, fighting with a motley army of Serbs. Greeks. Montenegrans, Russians. Italians, British, French, up through Macedonia.

Then in 1918 came his triumph. He saw his little Serbia swell to five times its original size, gobble Montenegro where he was born and slices of Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria and become the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later Jugoslavia. In 1921 old King Peter died and Alexander was King at last. Very quickly Croats and Slovenes learned who were their masters.

In 1929 Alexander made himself Dictator of his country.* For Prime Minister he remembered the man who is said to have opened the door to the palace murderers years before. In 1932. mounting public protest forced King Alexander to remove the hated General Zivkovitch from the Premiership.

Alexander of Jugoslavia trusted nobody, but at least he understood his neighbors, King Carol of Rumania and little Tsar Boris of Bulgaria. For over a year, with the mounting threat of Nazi Germany and its dream of eastern expansion and the possibility of a Habsburg restoration in Austria, he attempted to arrange a meeting of all three Kings with their respective foreign ministers discreetly in the background. Always a new crisis in hectic Rumania had made the tripartite meeting impossible.

Fortnight ago Alexander of Jugoslavia, his Queen, and his Foreign Minister entrained for Tsar Boris' Bulgaria. The Rumanian Cabinet was threatening to resign (it was reconstructed almost intact), Mistress Magda Lupescu had a bad cold so King Carol could not come.

Lacking King Carol, the other two Kings made a splendid show. At the Sofia station were Tsar Boris and his Italian Queen, Ioanna. and the flustered Mayor of Sofia holding a solid gold salver with the traditional offering of bread & salt. Everyone kissed everyone else. For two days there were parades and banquets, tea parties and reviews, and between times weighty conferences between the two Kings, their Foreign Ministers, interspersed with busy telephone calls to King Carol in Bucharest. No official resumes were given out, but every Balkan correspondent knew what the Kings were talking about:

1) Should Bulgaria, wartime enemy of Rumania and Jugoslavia, join their existing security pact?

2) What joint political or military measures should they take if Otto of Habsburg should regain the throne of Austria or Hungary?

3) Bulgaria and Rumania have already recognized Soviet Russia. Now that Russia has joined the League, should Jugoslavia do likewise, despite the great numbers of White Russians settled in the country and King Alexander's sentimental memories of his youth as a page at the court of Nicholas II? 4) Can the three countries adopt a united front against the growing power of Benito Mussolini in the Balkans? Should tongue-in-cheek approval be given to Adolf Hitler?

After three days, his spectacles gleaming ominously, King Alexander and his Queen returned to Belgrade. An official communique on the results of the royal visit was issued which carefully avoided any mention of anything beyond purely local issues. Customs guards will hereafter be much politer. Three new passes will be opened through the mountains. And engineers may soon bid for two new railroads, one to connect Sofia with the ports of Southern Jugoslavia.

Benito Mussolini knew that there was more to the conversations than that. So did the French Government. Minister of Marine Franc,ois Pietri sent his silk hat out to be steamed before hurrying down to Marseilles to meet King Alexander. In the Hotel Crillon in Paris chambermaids scoured the royal suite till it gleamed, and at a dozen French parade grounds troops tramped up & down before exasperated sergeants getting ready for a great state review. So great was the stake in the game he was about to play that at the last minute, Foreign Minister Barthou himself decided to run down to Marseilles. He was waiting at the dock one afternoon early this week when the Jugoslavian warship hove in sight.

Behind brilliant troops and massed bands, some 20,000 welcomers jam-packed the streets around the dock. Bright with fluttering pennons, French warships crowded the harbor. Airplanes droned overhead. Slowly the Jugoslavian warship drew in and docked. Erect and grave, King Alexander marched with his entourage down the gangplank. Minister Barthou stepped forward, smiling. The two men shook hands, chatted a moment. Officials, aides, secret service men clustered around them thick as flies. The party moved toward a line of shining automobiles. Cheering hoarsely the crowd strained against the tight rope of police and troops. King and Minister stepped into the fourth automobile and the line moved forward. It happened then almost exactly as it had happened to Franz Ferdinand of Austria on a hot July day in 1914 in Alexander's Serbia. Quick as a squirrel a nondescript youth ducked under the police line, leaped to the running board of the royal car. His pistol was scarcely an arm's length from the King as he began to fire. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! A sabre crashed on the assassin's head. His next shots went wild but the first had done their work. Minister Barthou clutched at his arm. King Alexander jerked, stiffened, then crumpled and slid to the floor of the car. Blood streamed from his mouth, oozed through his chest.

Like madmen a guard of cavalry whirled, charged on the screaming crowd. The assassin fell beneath shots and swords. Hit by a stray bullet, General Dimitriejevitch of Jugoslavia fell mortally wounded. King Alexander lurched half out of his automobile as the aides flung open the door. Horns shrieking, they sped him to the prefecture. There, while surgeons worked desperately over his four wounds, Alexander of Jugoslavia died.

Hour later, old Louis Barthou, whose single bullet had opened an artery in his arm, breathed his last. It was his death as much as the King's which caused statesmen, throughout Europe, to rush excitedly to Cabinet chambers.

Jugoslavian Ministers called the new King, 11-year-old Peter, home from school in England to his throne. He was to rule under a Regency which would undoubtedly include his mother Marie but not, thought observers, his scapegrace Uncle George. Enroute to Paris by train, home-loving Queen Marie, 34, sister of Rumania's Carol, heard of her husband's death at Besancon, turned and sped under heavy guard to Marseilles, asked that the body be untouched until she came.

*Because a good general always keeps his lines of retreat clear. Alexander of Jugoslavia paid himself a salary 13 times that of the President of the U. S., lived frugally and banked great slices of it in London, Geneva, Paris, New York.

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