Pesetas v. Parades

(See front cover)

Just after the University of Barcelona closed for the Easter vacation last week, rioting students broke into the rector's office, began to pummel the beadle.

"Gentlemen, Caballeros!" cried the rector. "What do you want?"

"We want a Republic!" shouted the ringleader.

"Por Dios!" said the rector. "It is not in my power to give you that!" He retired prudently while the students continued to beat the beadle.

They then tore down a huge picture of King Alfonso, and ripped it to tatters, hoisted the red flag, and attempted to organize a parade down Barcelona's broad boulevards. Police beat them back with the flats of their sabres.

In Valencia, other students expressed similar Republican ardor by smashing windows, throwing desks, chairs, bookcases out of the university windows, then swarming through the streets throwing stones, firing shots at the police. Civil guards, flourishing sabres above their varnished hats, stopped the riot with a clattering cavalry charge.

In Madrid, mechanically-minded medical students approached their school bearing in triumph a large wooden catapult with which they intended to cobblestone the police. The police, in their tightly belted, skirtlike green-grey capes, charged before the catapult could be set up. There was a fusillade of shots. A Civil guard cavalryman was killed. A messenger boy delivering football tickets 100 yards down the street was severely wounded. Two days later Madrid students attempted a march on the Royal Palace, led by dozens of shouting, excited girls. Police, with Spanish gallantry kept their swords sheathed, thumped the girls' heads with rubber clubs.

Royal Coup. Despite Republican riots, judicious observers felt that His Catholic Majesty Alfonso XIII had immeasurably strengthened his own position in the past fortnight. After swearing in the strong Royalist cabinet of Admiral Juan Bautista Aznar (TIME, March 2), Alfonso went to Great Britain to visit his ailing mother-in-law, Princess Beatrice. He realized that Spain's most immediate problem was not Republicanism, which like the poor he has always with him, but the parlous state of the Spanish peseta, which since the Dictatorship of the late Primo de Rivera has slumped from 5.89 to 10.66 to the dollar. A Loan from the House of Morgan helped stabilize the French franc in 1926. Spain had had $25,000,000 from the same source in 1928 in a frantic effort to peg the falling peseta. Thought Alfonso, a Morgan Loan would be just the thing.

Wires were pulled insistently. As a gesture to show how little stock he took in Republican uprisings, King Alfonso issued a decree restoring constitutional guarantees in Spain.

Banker John Pierpont Morgan was in Paris, on his way to a boating trip in the Mediterranean with his good friend the Archbishop of Canterbury. A Morgan Partner who had been in Madrid hurried to the meeting; so did Gates W. McGarrah, president of the Bank for International Settlements. King Alfonso went to Paris too, officially to break his journey to Madrid. Three days later came the announcement: an international credit of $60,000,000 for the Spanish Government had been established. J. P. Morgan & Co. and associates (Chase National Bank; Bankers Trust Co.; National City Bank; Guaranty Trust Co.; Kuhn, Loeb & Co.; Dillon, Read & Co.; Lee, Higginson & Co. and others) would underwrite $38,000,000 of this, the rest to be subscribed by a European group under the leadership of the Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas. France, of course, took no official part, but shrewd reporters suspected that some of the surplus gold in the Bank of France would find itself in the loan in accordance with the French Government's announced intention of lending money abroad (TIME, Feb. 9).

Came a note from jubilant Spanish Finance Minister Juan Ventosa, protege of Barcelona's Millionaire Francisco Cambo:

"The object of the Government is not to provoke an artificial quotation of the peseta but to maintain control of the market and avoid fluctuations. . . . Nothing was decided regarding the rate at which stabilization will be effected. . . . On fixing the limit, which Parliament will have to approve, it will have to be arranged that there will be no upset in individual or collective fortunes."

As soon as the news became known Spanish pesetas rose on Wall Street--nine one-hundredths of one cent.

Republican Rage. Whether the Morgan Loan is enough to stabilize the peseta permanently or not, it was an unmistakable sign that sober foreign financiers believe in the permanency of King Alfonso's throne enough to lend him $60,000,000.

Spanish Republicans raged. A Professor Felipe Sanchez Roman, Republican, filed suit in the Supreme Court last week, attacking the Morgan Loan as "unconstitutional" because it had not been approved by the Spanish Parliament. Spain has had no Parliament for seven and a half years. On Monday King Alfonso slipped out of the city to his hunting preserve, the Pardo, to discuss with leaders of the Constitutional Party their demand that he withdraw from the scene while a national convention meet to decide whether Spain shall continue as a monarchy or become a republic.

In the Athenaeum Club in Madrid, crowds cheered wildly when the Republican firebrand Professor Miguel de Unamuno sputtered:

"Alfonso doesn't want students to shout against him. Very well, this can be remedied easily, he can leave Spain. The Spanish monarchy since Charles V has been bathed in blood!"

Republican agitators shouted through the land that "Alfonso has sold the country to the Americans."

El Rey. Big-jawed Alfonso XIII, whom even his enemies admit is the most astute politician in Spain, had no intention of selling his country to the U. S.; but no monarch in Europe is more amiable to U. S. citizens or has a livelier interest in their country. Whether he means it or not, he is constantly telling interviewers of his desire to visit the U. S. "If I don't visit America soon," said he to correspondents month ago, "I will be too old to be decorative." (He is 44.) The U. S. is interested in Alfonso, too, for he has ruled longer than any living monarch.

Familiar are the main facts of his life: He was born a king. His blood is the most reactionary in Europe--both Habsburg and Bourbon. He married a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. His son & heir suffered for years from haemophilia (easy bleeding), was never expected to live for the succession, but is now apparently cured. Graven on the public mind is the fact that Alfonso plays polo a great deal, likes gunning and sailing, drives an automobile very fast.

Not quite so well known is the fact that Alfonso XIII is a fatalist with a great deal of personal courage and a macabre sense of humor. His pride is his private collection of objects which have been used in attempts to assassinate him. In neat glass cases are the poisoned feeding bottle which nearly did him in before he was a year old; a stone on which he nearly split his head as a boy; an assassin's rusty knife; the skeleton of the horse that was killed by a bomb in Paris as he drove with President Loubet in 1905; bits of the other bomb that killed a dozen bystanders and soldiers on his wedding day, splattered himself and his bride with blood. There is also a revolver. That revolver was fired at him repeatedly by one Sanchez Alegre as Alfonso rode through the streets of Madrid. The King wheeled, rode the assassin down under his horse's hoofs with a shout.

Alfonso's interest in the U. S. is not limited to remarking that he wished he could go there. Often he plays polo with or against U. S. citizens on his own fields in Madrid and Santander, or at Biarritz, Deauville, sometimes Ranelagh. In 1928 he gave a cup for a transatlantic sailing race from the U. S. to Santander. He gave the King of Spain Trophy for annual competition in the eight-metre class held in U. S. waters. Alfonso's admiration for U. S. businessmen (he profited handsomely from the late Ambassador Alexander Pollock Moore's advice on U. S. stocks) helped bring Spain's telephone monopoly to International Telephone & Telegraph Corp. His enthusiasm for U. S. cinema is great.

Douglas Fairbanks was once presented at court in Madrid by Ambassador Moore. Awed by Court flunkeys and chamberlains, Cinemactor Fairbanks bowed to His Majesty. El Rey left the throne, approached confidentially.

"Tell me, Mr. Fairbanks," asked His Catholic Majesty, "whatever became of Fatty--er--Arbuckle?"*

*After his scandal involving a girl and a beer bottle, Arbuckle changed his name to William Goodrich. He now directs comedies for Educational Films Corp. His current opus is called Back Page. Last week he was one of a delegation of film folk who paid their respects at Palm Springs, Calif, to Mayor James John ("Jimmy") Walker of New York.

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