Poor Potentate

In 1937 Adolf Hitler entertained at Berchtesgaden the then President of the Assembly of the League of Nations. That gentleman, the swank-loving, multimillionaire Aga Khan, was impressed. After Munich he wrote to the London Times predicting there would be no war. When the Blitzkrieg struck Flanders the Aga Khan and his beauteous Begum (rated No. 5 among the ten best-dressed women in the world) fled from a French spa, not to Britain but to Switzerland. In Geneva last week the Aga Khan was no longer able to get money transferred from his bank accounts in London, Bombay and Cairo.

"You might say I am almost destitute," said he. "What is the use of having money if you cannot get it? With strict economy we have enough to live on for a year, but there can be no extravagance. We are nothing but refugees, like millions of others. We must be thankful that we are still alive."

Part of the Aga Khan's racing stable has already been dispersed. (In December he sold four horses for fancy prices to Cinemagnate Louis B. Mayer and the beasts were shipped to the U. S. on a Cunarder with 125 German refugees.) Last week a U. S. syndicate (including James Cox Brady, Walter P. Chrysler Jr., Sylvester W. Lebrot and Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt) bought his great horse Bahrain, which won the Derby in 1935, for a reported price of $160,000. So last week the vexed and impoverished Aga Khan took up a less expensive sport--mountain climbing. Said he:

"I'm afraid I shall never be able to accomplish anything sensational, but tackling the Alps will be a relief after the terrible strain we are feeling now. No. I won't talk politics! All my prophecies have been so utterly wrong that it is useless to indulge in more guesswork."

In Jerusalem meanwhile, the Aga Khan's energetic son Aly Khan broadcast an appeal to all Mohammedans: "Help Britain with all your energy. Religious freedom has received what appears to be a death sentence in those countries which have fallen under totalitarian regimes, whereas it exists untrammeled in all Mohammedan countries where there is British influence."

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