"In Luck!"

One hundred thousand persons at the lowest count turned out last week, in Mexico City, to follow the hearse of a young man whose sole distinction is that he assassinated Mexico's President-Elect General Alvaro Obregon (TIME, July 30).

The assassin, Jose de Leon Toral. had been executed by a firing squad, earlier in the week. The officer in charge with a pistol which once belonged to General Obregon, had stepped up to the prostrate, bullet-riddled body of Toral, pressed the pistol to the temple and delivered the classic Mexican coup de grace.

As the hearse slowly proceeded along a three-mile route to .the cemetery, thousands of blossoms were showered upon it. and the crowds roared: "Long live Toral! Long live Christ the King!"

Within 24 hours after the execution of Jose de Leon Toral, a dynamite bomb was exploded under the locomotive of the special train of Mexico's provisional president, Sefior Emilio Portes Gil (TIME, Dec. 10). The engine was derailed, one fireman was killed, and two coaches left the track. President Portes Gil descended unhurt from his salon car, walked forward to the locomotive, shrugged his broad shoulders and remarked: "The revolution star is in luck!"*

*The now ruling party in Mexico is called ''Revolutionary party."