El Rey Alfonso

Over various cities in Spain appeared airplanes--not an unusual event, that. Some of the machines, however, had painted on their lower wings the word "Liberty"; others were labeled, with big letters, "Republic of Spain." These planes had been sent from "somewhere in France" by Vicente Blasco Ibanez, author, auto-advertiser, professed enemy of the King of Spain. They had come to Spain to drop their cargoes of Ibanez manifestos, the original of which was published a few weeks ago in Paris (TIME, Oct. 20, Dec. 1).

As far as could be ascertained, the pamphlets were seized before they were distributed. From the Directorate went forth a protest to France against Ibanez's activities in that land. Preparations were taken to prevent repetition.

At Madrid, two days later, a cinema proprietor was imprudent enough to show a film based on one of Ibanez's novels. As the title flashed onto the screen, the audience hissed and booed, shouted long and hoarsely Viva el Rey; then, they insisted upon the national anthem being played; and, as the martial chords were let loose from the orchestra, the people sang almost passionately the Marcha Real:

Viva, viva, magnanimo el Rey Alfonso!

Alfonso trece, el Rey Alfonso trece!

Cina a sits sienes oliva y laurel

La mono fervida del pueblo fiel.

After that spontaneous outburst the management was left with no alternative but to substitute another film.

The demonstration was decidedly a protest against the campaign which Author Ibanez has been waging, against the King on foreign soil. But it was something more. It was tacitly a popular manifestation, evinced by a small and, persumably, representative section of the people, in favor of the Monarchy as an institution; for, in Spain, the real master is the Monarchy, quite irrespective of the King's personality. In Egypt, King Fuad is the monarch; and Great Britain is the master. In Russia, the proletariat is sovereign; but the Moscow oligarchy is the keeper of the sovereignty. In Italy, Vitorio Emanuele is King; and Benito Mussolini is master. So Spain, too, has her monarchs and masters. King Alfonso is the real master; Primo Rivera is an accident which was the result of a revolt (TIME, Sept. 24, 1923). He was not strong enough to fight the Monarchy, even had he wished to. For the moment, he had obtained the master hand. Alfonso was forced to recognize him or start a civil war. Of the two alternatives, the King chose the former. He took a leaf of the book of the King of Italy and recognized the new regime as an opportunity to end the Moroccan campaign and to purge the country's politics of corruption without the hindrance of parliamentary incompetence. That the experiment has not been entirely successful it is safe to say. The hostility toward the Directorate is unmistakable; and its lease of power is certainly expiring. But that the King's prestige has in any way suffered is an illusion which has been created by revolutionary propagandists on foreign soil. It is significant enough that Alfonso has told Primo that the Dictatorship must go and that Primo is preparing all too slowly for his exit. The monarch says "Go!" The master goes; he is not strong enough to fight the Monarchy. Who is the real master? Evidently, Alfonso.

On a cold November day in 1885, King Alfonso XII breathed his last as the oppressive gloom of winter settled over Madrid. His royal spouse, the Habsburg Maria Christina, became Regent for her five-year-old daughter Maria-de-las Mercedes. In Spain, the season of the people's discontent was upon them. Progressive ideas were seething in reactionary cauldrons. Under a Queen such as little Maria, who was sure to be dominated all her life by her mother's ideas, Spain could only expect to see the new wine of her progressive aspirations poured down the neck of the grandee's old bottles--with the disastrous results depicted in the Bible.

But on the 17th day of May in the year 1886, the sun rose to kiss the orange trees; and men rose with the joyous feelings born of spring. Not much later in the day, an event which put the sun in an unnatural eclipse was announced: The Dowager Queen Maria had given birth to a son, six months after the death of her husband. No longer was little Maria Queen; Alfonso XIII, a baby not yet in swaddling clothes, had in theory become King from the minute of his birth. Madrid was burned to a cinder in a great fire of enthusiasm; and the conflagration spread rapidly to the provinces.

At first, it was thought that the little King would not live--such a palefaced child was he, suffering from the effects of generations of inbreeding. On the perfectly plausible plea of sparing him undue fatigue, the royal child was relegated to the beautiful seclusion of luxuriant palace gardens. Rarely did he appear on the streets, never was he taught anything that might help him later on to understand his people. Under these circumstances, ominous reverberations of public discontent again began to shake the kingdom.

Sixteen years of titular kingships under a domineering regency was necessary before the boy-King was to assume control. Whatever hopes the people had placed in Alfonso XIII were instantly blighted. To the man-in-the-street he appeared to be the paragon of haughty despotism--a king caring only for the external magnificance of his court, depending only on the conservative grandees and the bigoted prelates for advice. His former popularity had vanished like snow upon the desert.

Moreover, sports were little understood in Spain, especially at this period of her history; and the fact that her monarch was devoted to polo, fond of riding, shooting, yachting, motoring-- because, in fact, he was an all-round sportsman--the people suspected that all was not well with him. El juego sportivo--that was not for Spaniards. Indeed, the king's star was not in the ascendant.

About this time, talk of marriage was heard; and, not long after, Alfonso set out for a tour of the Courts. Although there was not a court at Paris, that Capital had always appealed to him as being filled to overflowing with the most voluptuous of damsels. So at Paris, on his return from visiting Uncle Fred (Archduke Friedrich) in Austria, President Loubet and his Ministers welcomed the King of Spain; and all he got out of the visit, besides a rousing reception, was a night at the Opera when he narrowly escaped assassination at the hands of a Spaniard. Of all the Courts he had visited and all the princesses he had seen, none appealed to him as much as Victoria Eugenie, the blue-eyed, fair-haired Princess Ena of Battenberg, granddaughter of Queen Victoria. And so, at Biarritz, he became formally engaged to her; and, the next year (1906), the couple were married in Madrid. The ceremony was marred only by the dastardly attempt of an anarchist on the lives of the royal pair. Fortunately, they escaped all injury; unfortunately, several spectators and members of the wedding procession were killed or injured.

About this time it was noticed that the King listened patiently to his Ministers, but did not always act upon their advice. He developed a most curious thirst for knowing all the facts of a case and, more extraordinary, he even insisted upon knowing both sides of a question. Never before had a King of Spain been so unreasonable. Matters went from bad to worse, in the opinion of certain politicians. The King actually insisted on visiting the remotest parts of his kingdom in order to understand specific problems at first hand. He let it be known that he had the people's interests at heart and with great courage he carried out his policy. His indifference to convention aroused the affection of all; for example, when Senor Canalejas was assassinated, he dashed from the Palace in a cab to the Home Office where the body had been taken; and on the day of the funeral he walked at the head of the mourners.

From the first day of the War, the King showed that he was wholeheartedly on the side of the Allies. Although he vigorously maintained, as Monarch, a proper attitude of neutrality, he personally went farther in assisting the Allies than did any other neutral sovereign. His first act was to assure France through his Government that there was no need to maintain a large Army on the Franco-Spanish frontier. The French relied upon his assurances and transferred no less than three army corps from the Pyrenees to the battlefields of northern France. More signal proof of his attachment to the Allied cause were his efforts on the behalf of prisoners-of-war and his great services in ascertaining the fate of soldiers and civilians reported missing. He was, through his personal organization, enabled to help stricken relatives in every way possible by forwarding parcels and organizing charities. Another thing, not at all well known, was that the King offered to lead an Army himself in the Allied cause. The offer was refused as clearly impossible if Spain were to maintain a neutral attitude. And, in last proof of his devotion to the Allies, at a time when the fortunes of the Central Powers were at their highest and pro-German feeling in Madrid was openly evinced, Alfonso was quoted as saying: "In Madrid, only the canaille and myself are pro-Ally."

In the present year, the 39th of Alfonso's reign and age, this tall, slight man with the ready smile--gay, brave to the point of recklessness, with features in no wise handsome, but none the less attractive--is in reality a monarch beloved by his people. Much more than his embittered enemies may he be called a democrat of Spain. Hard-worker, severely earnest in fulfilling his responsibilities, unusually tactful and liberal-minded, rapid and accurate in his decisions, he combines to a high degree of perfection those qualities of intellect for which he has earned recognition. If he has had his affaires--and he has--they have in no way diminished his ability to rule.