''King" Waldo I

To be king of three little islands and dozens of little islets out in a tropic sea, where one's word is law and where the palm leaves wiggle in approbation,--such is the destiny of Captain Waldo Evans, U. S. N. retired, onetime commandant of the Great Lakes (Ill.) Naval Training Station, onetime Governor of Samoa, who was last week appointed by President Coolidge to be "king" of the Virgin Islands. His official title is Governor, but he is the sole military, civil and judicial head of the islands and is responsible to no one except the President. Few would be the wiser if he had his subjects wash his feet, rub his brow, lull him to sleep. "King" Waldo I will soon gaze upon his domain--the islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix and St. John, and some 50 adjacent islets controlling the Virgin Passage at the gateway to the Caribbean Sea, 60 miles east of Porto Rico, 1,400 miles from Manhattan. The Virgin Islands were, as every schoolboy knows, discovered by Columbus in 1494 on his second voyage to the Americas. They were purchased by the U. S. in 1917 from Denmark for $25,000,000. They are not big (132 square miles); the harbor of St. Thomas looks like a baby Golden Gate. In this realm live several hundred Americans, Danes and Spaniards, 20,000 Negroes. They plant sugar, have tropic fun. A few of them are disgruntled because the U. S. has not yet granted them citizenship. The population has been steadily decreasing, because of Negro migrations to Haiti, Cuba, Porto Rico, Santo Domingo and New York City.