Little King

The new boy never got to know the British school well. And after 13 days, when he was gone, the school realized that it never knew the new boy either. Sandroyd School, Surrey, so small that it is omitted from most British school directories, settled back to its usual existence last week, after the exciting thought that the pale little boy of 11, the one with the bangs and the bony knees, had suddenly become a King, and for a moment the most spotlighted person in the world. Before breakfast Peter II of Jugoslavia was hauled from his dormitory bed and brought down to the headmaster's office. His old tutor, a man named Parrott, was there too. The boy learned that his father had had a serious automobile accident, that he must go up to London at once. He packed the one brown suitcase that is supposed to be sufficient for Sandroyd boys, put on his belted overcoat and his school cap, got into the car. At the Ritz "Granny," Dowager Queen Marie of Rumania, was waiting for him. Looking even more dramatic than usual, she wept a great deal, but would say nothing beyond the fact that there had been ''an accident, my God, a terrible accident." There was a whispered conference among the grownups, and they took away Peter's school cap. Faithful Mr. Parrott came back in a little while with a brown felt hat. It was much too big for Peter and settled down over his ears. On the Channel steamer he kept asking questions and was finally persuaded to play deck tennis with Tutor Parrott. Mr. Parrott missed the ring a good many times, and seemed distracted. At Paris the train stopped some distance from the station. Heavily guarded by police and still spouting questions, little Peter of Jugoslavia was rushed to the Paris residence of Jugoslavia's Marshal of the Royal Household, while the rest of his party went to the Ritz.* Next morning Dowager Queen Marie of Jugoslavia, all in black and looking very pale and sick, arrived to meet her son. As Peter ran forward to kiss her she did something very funny. She dropped on one knee and curtsied.

"Peter," said she. "your father is dead. His enemies killed him in Marseilles. Now you are the King of Jugoslavia. Never forget that your father died like a king. His duty is now your duty. His work is your work. To do those things for which he gave his life must be your constant aim."

Puzzled and tearful little King Peter kept crying: "But Mama, why did they do it? Why did they do it?"

That night the royal party set off for Belgrade and home. At Innsbruck one reporter was allowed to board the special train. He learned from Dowager Queen Marie of Rumania that Dowager Queen Marie of Jugoslavia was a very sick woman. Besides the gallstones from which she has been suffering in recent weeks, she had painfully ulcerated teeth.

Then Belgrade. At the railway station were the members of the Regency, the Mayor of Belgrade with the traditional salver of bread & salt, Deputies, generals, priests, rabbis, ladies-in-waiting. There, too, was a guard of honor, stiffly at attention, with the national colors draped in black. Little King Peter knew what he must do. Loudly his childish treble piped out: "May God help, heroes!" Back came the bass roar of the Guards: ''God keep you!"

The fiercely whiskered premier made a speech of welcome. Still holding the hat that was too large for him, the little King bowed and replied:

"I thank you, Uzunovitch!"

"That's all now," whispered his mother and they got into the car and drove to Dedinje Palace, on a hill outside the city, through cheering lines of schoolchildren. There at home his brothers Princes Tomislav and Andreja were waiting for him. When the door was shut it was safe to cry.

All this time the body of Peter's murdered father was coming back from Marseilles on the light cruiser Dubrovnik, the same ship that had carried Alexander to France and to death. In a very simple coffin he lay. One of the last acts of Queen Marie before rushing to Paris to join her son was to have the admiral's uniform in which her husband was killed changed to the service dress of a Serbian general, in which he had spent most of his life. Nations hurried to do him honor. From Rome Benito Mussolini wired shore batteries to fire salutes as the little Dubrovnik passed through the narrow Straits of Messina. Four British and three French cruisers dropped anchor in the harbor of Split, hauled their flags to half-mast to await Alexander's homecoming.

From the palace of the Roman Emperor Diocletian high above the harbor floated a great black banner and other streamers of crepe hung from nearly every window in the town when the Dubrovnik came in with its sad freight. For a few hours King Alexander lay in state, before being carried to a special train and sent on a slow roundabout journey through the provinces of his enemies to his capital. At every important town the train made a brief pause, longest of all in Zagreb, capital of "rebellious Croatia." If any still hated Alexander they dared not show it.

Typical of the country's reaction was that of a Roman Catholic priest named Anton Koroshetz. As leader of the Slovenian People's Party Father Koroshetz has been interned on a Dalmatian island for almost two years. Last week he begged and obtained permission to go to Split "to say a prayer and drop a tear on the coffin of my king."

"We must forget the past," said Father Koroshetz. "We must work and live for Jugoslavia."

Meanwhile in Vienna bronze casters and workmen of the firm of Julius Maschner & Son were working day & night to finish a 500-lb. copper and bronze coffin for the body of the murdered King. There was not time for an entirely original design but Julius Maschner & Son are used to rushing work. In existence for some 300 years, the firm has made coffins for Maria Theresa, the Empress Elizabeth, the murdered Archduke Rudolf of Habsburg, Emperor Franz Josef, the murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the murdered Alexander Obrenovitch of Serbia. In the elaborate neo-Byzantine Kara-Georgevitch family tomb on the hill of Oplenatz murdered Alexander of Jugoslavia, in his Austrian sarcophagus, will soon lie. From their catalog, Julius Maschner & Son chose the same model coffin as those they recently completed for former Chancellors Dollfuss and Seipel of Austria. All they had to do was remove the Roman crucifix from the lid and replace it with a Serbian Orthodox cross, applique the Jugoslav royal arms and a silver name plate. There were also a few minor adjustments to be made to be sure that it would fit on a Jugoslav gun carriage.

All Europe echoed with the pitiful cry of little King Peter: "Why did they do it?" They did it because the various Balkan nationalities that were persuaded to throw in their lot with Serbia after the War feel that they have been bilked of their due. The Kingdom that they thought they were joining, that of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, quickly became Jugoslavia, in which only the voice of Serbia could be heard. Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Slovenes found Serbia a far more brutal master than Austria-Hungary. Any effort to state national aspirations in public brought instant oppression, exile, often torture and assassination. From Serbia's point of view this policy worked for all the provinces but one. The Croats were not to be downed. They fought back, inside Jugoslavia and out.

In France public resentment at the ease with which the murders were executed forced the reorganization of the Doumergue Cabinet, the retirement of Minister of the Interior Albert Sarraut. Working fast and furiously to save their reputations, the French secret police, assisted by the Jugoslav police, had uncovered by the week's end, the following "facts": Alexander's assassin, hacked to pieces by police sabres and bullets, was a fat young man named Petrus Kalemen, later said to be Vlada Georgieff. On his arm was tattooed the motto and device of a Mace donian secret society known as IMRO. The weapon with which the murders were committed was a huge ungainly Mauser automatic pistol of the latest type which sprays 20 shots like a machine gun. In his pockets Kalemen also carried a Walther pistol, a hand grenade, and 150 loose cartridges. He did not need them. With the Mauser he was able To kill: Alexander of Jugoslavia Foreign Minister Louis Barthou of France Yolande Farris Mme Marie Dubrec To wound: General Alfonse Joseph Georges of France General Alexander Dimitriejevitch of Jugoslavia Admiral Philippe Berthelot Police Inspector Calestin Galli Policeman Felix Forestier Marius Humbert Laurent Tortero Mme Justine de Mawer and her son Felix Edmond Brooks Dascomb, U. S. newsreel photographer, made a complete record of the assassination while bullets whistled round his ears. Four days later he dropped dead from a cerebral hemorrhage. Petrus Kalemen was not alone in his plot. Acting on secret tips, police on the French border arrested two men attempting to slip over the line into Switzerland: Ivan Raitch and Zvonemer Posposil. According to the French police, Raitch, Posposil and Kalemen were members of a Croatian terrorist organization known as Ustashi, sworn to the assassination of King Alexander in revenge for the murder of the great Croat Leader Stephan Raditch in Belgrade's Parliament six years ago. Ustashi's founder is an exiled Croatian deputy named Ante Pavelitch. Its headquarters was at a Hungarian camp for Croatian refugees at Janka Puszta where they were supposed to have been drilled by Hungarian army officers. Conspirator Pavelitch was said to have sent the five men to France with forged passports to murder the King. Petrus Kalemen was to try in Marseilles, the others in Paris. Following confessions by Raitch and Posposil, French police picked up one Sylvester Mathy after he had hid for days in the Forest of Fontainebleau, living on roots & herbs. They sought three other suspects--a mysterious young girl known as Marie Vjoudroch whose duty was to carry suitcases of small arms to the assassins, and two men. All Europe exploded in a few days of mutual recrimination. Because the murder weapons were German made. French police tried to blame the Nazis. Jugoslav crowds hurled insults at Italian consulates. Orthodox Serbians pelted Roman Catholic churches with stones, then switched their spleen to Hungary which had given shelter to Ustashi. A dozen chancelleries grew worried. Press attacks suddenly ceased. Jugoslavia, too. was calm. It might be the heavy silence before the hurricane, but for the time being even the angry attacks against Italy ceased. Jugoslavia, like all Europe, was waiting to see if the new Regency could govern that piebald land.

Of the last nine Serbian rulers, only three, including King Alexander's senile father, Peter I, died natural deaths while reigning. Spectacled Alexander never expected to share his father's luck. At his country estate in Bled last January he drew up his will and decreed that in case of his sudden death, three regents should rule the country until little Peter became of age (18):

Prince Paul, his 41-year-old cousin whose wife is the sister of the Duke of Kent's Princess Marina.

Dr. Radenko Stankovitch, former Minister of Education.

Governor Ivan Perovitch, of Sava Province.

Stankovitch, a Serb, and Perovitch, a Croat, are sympathetic to Croatian aspirations. But there was a joker up Alexander's political will. Should anything happen to these regents he had three substitutes. The most important was the ironfisted, fire-eating Serb, General Vojeslav Tomitch, commander of the Belgrade Garrison.

The new regents will have much more than the unruly Croats to contend with. Jugoslavia's population is 11% Mohammedan. Dalmatia is filled with Italians, the scene of much Italian intrigue. Bosnia and Herzegovina have important German minorities. Montenegrans are wondering why they ever gave up their independence.

As senior regent, pale scholarly Prince Paul Kara-Georgevitch is not an over-impressive figure to hold in line this racial conglomeration that is Jugoslavia. At the National Assembly he took the oath of office last week, listened to a great funeral oration from Premier Uzunovitch while Deputies roared out "Slavu Mu! Glory to Him!" at every mention of the dead King. Eyes kept turning from the pale Prince Regent to another figure behind him. grizzled, bristling General Pera Zivkovitch, by tradition the man who let the murderers of Alexander Obrenovitch into the royal palace, virtual dictator for three years under Alexander of Jugoslavia, the strongest, the most hated man in the kingdom, and as Commander of the Royal Guard, proprietor of a well-drilled, well-equipped army-within-an-army of nearly 10,000 men.

*Seldom has any hotel sheltered so much royalty as the Paris Ritz that night. On the register were Dowager Queen Marie of Rumania, Princess Ileana and her husband Archduke Anton of Habsburg, Infante Alfonso of Spain, Grand Duke Cyril of Russia and his son Prince Vladimir, Princess Marina of Greece. Mr. & Mrs. Johnson of Pembina, N. Dak. complained of the service.

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