Abdication Intimated

On the playing fields of Eton, where Englishmen may or may not have won the World War, bandy-legged little Prajadhipok got some of the guts which make him a remarkable King of Siam. Later as a cadet in the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, the future Possessor of the 24 Umbrellas (Siamese symbol of Kingship) learned a thing or two about soldiering which has helped him to ride out two revolutions. Last week the weak-eyed King Prajadhipok, condemned to rule, as it were, from the operating tables of his Western oculists, was recuperating in England from his latest operation for a cataract of the left eye when suddenly cables from Singapore flashed that he had abdicated.

This news break mildly annoyed the King. Snug in a rambling rented country house in Surrey, he has been bickering by cable for weeks with Siamese Premier Bahol, the rough & ready General who won the Second Revolution which has not dethroned Prajadhipok. If only someone at Singapore, probably a cable relay clerk, had not blabbed, His Majesty might have continued for months or years in languid Siamese fashion to treat with his obstreperous Premier.

The issue at stake is complex, technical and peculiarly vital to Siamese under sentence of Death. In the opinion of His Majesty, Premier Bahol was wangling into a new law clauses under which the King is deprived of his right to pardon a condemned criminal or to consent to his execution.

Considering where the King of Siam spends most of his time, namely, on the other side of the world, there is reason on the Premier's side of the quarrel. But the Old Etonian is a stickler. When the Singapore flash reached England, His Majesty reluctantly drove up from Surrey, released an elaborate statement to the London Press. All most Englishmen cared to read was this: ''The King has intimated his desire to abdicate to the Government at Bangkok. No definite documents of any kind have yet been signed by the King."

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