Inscrutable Design

A suite on the second floor of Washington's Mayflower Hotel constitutes the legation of the Kingdom of Albania. The drawing room is dominated by a talking-machine with a Gargantuan, oldfashioned, master's-voice horn. Presiding there since 1926 has been cultured, convivial Faik (pronounced "fah-eek") Konitza, a sixtyish bachelor who reads 13 languages, has an earned M. A. from Harvard University and numbers among his friends beauteous Ann Corio, famed Italianate strip-teaseuse.

Last week, as the voice of his fugitive master, King Zog I, dwindled away behind the mountains of Greece, drowned out by the cannon of Mussolini, Minister Konitza betook himself to the State Department to protest his country's rape and to announce that he, like Minister Hurban of Czecho-Slovakia (TIME, March 27), would not yield his legation to his country's conquerors. Should he hear from King Zog that all was lost he would, he said, burn all his papers: the Italians should never have them.

To the press, Minister Konitza made the following statement: "The Italians have many admirable qualities and are a great nation, but God Almighty, in His inscrutable design, has deprived them of all sense of chivalry. Just when our Queen gave birth to a child, the Italians dealt this blow.

"A prizefighter, willing to impress the world with his strength, does not knock down a child, but challenges another prize-fighter."

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