"Kings . . . to the Scaffold . . ."

"Kings . . . to the Scaffold . . ."

Rumored the richest Spaniard, certainly one of the saddest, is old Count de Romanones. He arranged the flight of Alfonso XIII (TIME, April 27). He put Queen Victoria Eugenie, the ailing Crown Prince and the rest of the Spanish Royal Family on a train at Madrid and said the last goodbye. As their glory and his reflected glory faded, the Count sat stunned by his emotions on a railway station bench. Last week Count de Romanones rose courageously in the Socialist and savagely antiMonarchist National Assembly. For perhaps the last time Monarchist de Romanones defended with all his forensic skill the Last of the Bourbons.

Defense seemed hopeless. "Alfonso de Bourbon y Habsburg Lorraine is guilty of high treason," a Parliamentary Committee had already reported. "He is guilty of heading a military rebellion [the Primo de Rivera Dictatorship]. . . . He is guilty of lese majeste against the sovereignty of the Spanish people."

The Committee recommended that Alfonso XIII be stripped of all his titles & possessions in Spain and endure "perpetual imprisonment in case he steps upon Spanish territory."

Undismayed, Count de Romanones launched his resounding plea: "Kings may be taken to the scaffold but they may not be gratuitously defamed!"

It was defamation, argued the Count, to say that His Majesty "led" the Dictatorship. Rather it was forced upon him. Historians disagree upon this point. Last week Count de Romanones furnished historians with a telegram. Dated Sept. 14, 1923, addressed to the King and signed by General Primo de Rivera, it harangued His Most Catholic Majesty in threatening terms. Count de Romanones argued that this telegram "intimidated" Alfonso XIII into accepting the Dictatorship.

From a legal standpoint the telegram, if genuine, was interesting. But to read it to a National Assembly was an old man's folly. By excusing the Thirteenth Alfonso as "timid," loyal old Count de Romanones sealed such doom as Spain's National Assembly could inflict.

Promptly the ousted King (who never abdicated) was sentenced by the National Assembly to all the penalties previously recommended by its Commission. Bitterly Count de Romanones commented: "It would have been as easy to condemn the King to Death as to life imprisonment contingent on His Majesty's return to Spain! What really hurts him is the other punishment."

Asked what he meant by this curious statement, Count de Romanones said in effect that Alfonso XIII can ignore all parts of the National Assembly's sentence except that which deprives him of property worth $10,000,000 in Spain.

The Spanish peseta, still stamped with the portrait of Alfonso XIII, slumped last week to a new low for all time: 11.56 pesetas to the dollar (at par 5.18 pesetas equal $1).

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