A Luncheon

In the Royal Palace at Santander, a luncheon party was given by King Alfonso. Among the notables invited to lunch were the Duke of Alba, General Primo Rivera, U. S. Ambassador Alexander P. Moore.

During the conversation, in which the King spoke on internal affairs, it was duly noted that Ambassador Moore called the King "Chief" and the Duke of Alba "Jimmy". Alfonso responded to such familiarity by saying that he and Mr. Moore understood each other.

It is an unwritten law-- not always, however, unvoiced-- that royal utterances shall not be directly quoted. What King Alfonso has to say about Spain was therefore placed conveniently in the third person. If the account had been quoted in the first person it would have revealed Alfonso's sang froid to a marked degree and would have appeared thus: "The rumor of a coming crisis has been spread by Spanish newspapers which do not like the present regime because it has cut off the subsidies allowed the Press by the former Government. There are 70 dailies and 3,000 other periodicals in Spain, and I interpret much of their opposition to the Directorate to a desire to see the restablishment of a regime which would restore the subsidies. Personally, I oppose such a system as leading to corruption, whereas one of the objects of the present Spanish Government is to have in Spain a system of independent newspapers such as exists in the United States.

"Several Madrid journals published a statement that General Primo de Rivera was going to fight a duel with another General, a member of the Directorate. Observe, gentlemen, that both Generals are present at this luncheon and on best terms.

"It is not proposed to abolish the system of representative parliamentary government in Spain; it has been suspended as the most efficacious means of reforming conditions, which is the purpose of the new regime. I think great strides have been made toward giving Spain a clean Government. There is no intention of superseding Primo de Rivera; on the contrary, I am sure that the Dictator will remain in power until conditions have been made safe for the return of parliamentary government, and I think this will take at least another year.

"The Government is making great progress toward rooting out governmental graft, including padded payrolls. As an example of what has been accomplished, look at the budget of the city of Valencia, which has had a deficit of 2,000,000 pesetas. Without curtailing the public service, this has been converted into a favorable balance of 1,000,000 pesetas. The Government has gone ahead with the good roads program and the extension of the common-school system.

"But the big job of the new regime is to give clean government to Spain, and from what I have heard from the people, I feel confident that Primo de Rivera has popular approval. I may say that it is wrong to call the General a Dictator, since Spain is really being run by a directorate of ten men, and not by one man."

As was truly remarked, the King is unafraid of his enemies, who represent the throne as crumbling.