"To Die a King. . . ."

To monarchists mass meeting in Seville last week spoke fiery old Alvaro de Figueroa y Torres Count de Romanones, thrice Prime Minister of Spain before the dictatorship of King Alfonso and the late Don Miguel Primo de Rivera began in 1923.

"I am still a monarchist," boomed Count de Romanones, "but I hold that the best way out of Spain's present political deadlock lies through the abdication of King Alfonso and the elevation to the Throne of another member of the dynasty!"

Roars of monarchist applause followed. News of the Count's outburst was rigidly censored out of Spanish papers next day, and in his palace Alfonso XIII must have felt increasingly alone--for Count de Romanones has long been His Majesty's close, trusted friend.

Czechoslovak papers scare-headed that "King Alfonso will soon flee to his cousin's castle in the Slovak Alps."

Cautiously at Prague the Spanish Legation admitted that Count Zamoyski (husband of His Majesty's cousin the Infanta Isabella) has "invited" the Spanish Royal Family to visit his Alpine castle.

''But I have no information," said the flustered legation spokesman, "no knowledge whatever about how the invitation was worded!"

A cousin not of King Alfonso but of Queen Victoria Eugenie of Spain is George V. Last week His Britannic Majesty's Government abruptly deported from Liverpool two Spanish airmen-revolutionists: Captain Antonio Rexach and Lieut. Joaquin Collar. Both escaped from Spain when the attempted coup d'etat of Major Ramon Franco, "The Spanish Lindbergh," failed (TIME, Dec. 22).

Fearful lest other Spanish airmen try a coup, King Alfonso last week disbanded the entire Royal Air Force for 30 days, decreed that when reorganized next month it will be merely a division of the regular army.

Swank Spanish airmen have been a corps d'elite, have strutted in natty green uniforms, are now reduced to mere khaki.

Having spanked his Air Force, shrewd Alfonso XIII curried favor with his Army, raised the pay of lieutenants 25%, generals 10%, other ranks in intermediate proportion.

In the Spanish Army every loth man is an officer. Up to last week ordinary lieutenants received the miserable pay of $440 yearly. But there are three very special lieutenants who have been drawing $3.300 per year each--no one in Spain knows why, or at least no one tells.

"A person connected with the Royal Palace," reported the Associated Press mysteriously from Madrid, "said today that King Alfonso's . . . determination was still to die if need be, but to die a king."

His Majesty, famed as "the only man ever born a king,"-- has thus a peculiarly valid reason for wanting to die a king.

*His father, Alfonso XII, died six months before Alfonso XIII was born.

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