Monarchisms

Royalists and Imperialists rejoiced, last week, as progress was made away from Democracy:

P: Poland's eccentric dictator, Marshal Josef Pilsudski, was besought by 1,500 delegates of the Monarchist Party to proclaim himself "Emperor of Poland" last week.

Marshal Pilsudski who is now gulping mineral water at a Rumanian spa, "The Baths of Hercules," did not repudiate the suggestion of a Crown. Poland was of truly Imperial dimensions circa 1650 in the great days of Ladislas IV and John Casimir II.

P: Since practically every Hungarian is a royalist, the perennial squabble between Budapest politicians is over whether to elect a king or to recognize the legitimate claim of Prince Otto of Habsburg. Last week legitimist Hungarians were wroth to the point of oaths and tears because Prime Minister Count Stephen Bethlen has just appointed the leader of the electionists, Herr Julius Gombos, to be Under Secretary for War.

At present Hungary is ruled by His Serene Highness Nicholas Horthy de Nagybanya, Governor of the Kingdom -which has yet to choose a king. Count Bethlen, virtually a dictator, leans covertly toward the electionists. The legitimists suspect him of wanting to snatch for himself 15-year old Prince Otto's Crown.

The actual and holy Crown of St. Stephen without which no monarch has been King of Hungary for 900 years, now lies in a great vault atop the citadel of Buda.

P: One of the few direct and absolute commands issued recently by British Emperor George V was cabled to Santa Barbara, Calif., into the harbor of which steamed, last week, H. M. S. Durban, carrying Prince George, youngest son of Their Majesties, in his technical capacity of a mere Naval Lieutenant.

The command, really a prohibition, forbade Prince George to fly from Santa Barbara to Hollywood. So Prince George motored to Hollywood and famed Douglas and Mary fed him there.

H. R. H. said: "Your California climate is certainly all that you advertise it to be."

"Oh yes, I like the Navy very much.

They treat me just like the other officers, only I have a better cabin."

Hearst Feature Writer "Annie Laurie" tittered at fatuous length:

"Prince George -dear me . . . young and good looking, and heart whole and fancy free. Do you suppose there is a girl in California who will have a moment's peace while the prince is here . . . deep eyes and such a voice of mellow sweetness. . . .

"Dear, dear -here he is right in our midst -a real, live prince. . . . [Whisper] -I'd really rather be a traffic cop myself, wouldn't you?

"I wonder if the blue jellyfish . . . out at Point Lobes . . . have kings of their own, big jellyfish, bluer and more transparent than all the rest -and do they have royal weddings, do you suppose? Maybe. . ,"*

After leaving Santa Barbara, Captain Coleridge of H. M. S. Durban radioed to the Associated Press as he steamed toward the Panama Canal and Bermuda: "I should be obliged if you would note that all press reports concerning his Royal Highness Prince George during the visit are without foundation and are unauthorized." Seemingly this blanket statement was intended to smother an A. P. story that H. R. H. had split his trousers in Santa Barbara, while performing the "varsity drag."

* The supreme achievement of "Annie Laurie'' is a biography of Mrs. Phoebe Apperson Hearst (mother of W. R. H.), printed on parchment in California, illustrated with superb steel engravings, limited to 1,000 numbered copies, and now being bound at Leipzig, Germany, with gold edges all 'round, velvet linings, and hand tooled pigskin covers. Reputed cost, $45,000,