"This is Comic!"

If a fallen king can still fall, Don Alfonso XIII slipped definitely lower last week. One of the richest men and the most powerful monarchist in Spain, sad, grizzled old Count de Romanones, not only broke with his oldtime King but called him in effect a fool for flooding Spain with smuggled copies of a secret manifesto.

"That manifesto," said Count de Romanones bitterly, "was both silly and absurd. I wish I could say that it was not authentic."

Jauntily, after the miscarriage of his plans, Don Alfonso XIII left Paris for a tour of the Holy Land. "This is comic beyond belief!" he chuckled in Jerusalem when correspondents asked if he had signed the manifesto. "This is what I should call taking my name in vain, ha, ha!"

Excerpt from Don Alfonso's manifesto, declared authentic by Count de Romanones, "Spaniards: For nearly a year I have suffered in silence as much as humanly possible and God alone knows that only a man born a Christian King and gentleman could know how to suffer such pain. . . . In raising my banner my intentions are not to divide but to unite all groups of Spaniards and I say to them: My flag is the same as always, red and yellow, and holy and blessed to which I pledged my life as did millions of Spaniards--a flag that goes with me wherever I go and which shall be the winding sheet of my body, a flag in which I see the image of a strong and silent flame. Let us all unite in true spiritual communion to save Spain from the anarchy and communism sweeping the country."

In Madrid potent Juan de la Cierva, father of the famed inventor of the autogiro, agreed with Count de Romanones that the manifesto is genuine, expressed his disgust at the depths of hypocrisy it revealed. It was understood that Count de Romanones and Juan de la Cierva proposed to join forces, founding a new Monarchist Party to elevate as King of Spain someone other than Don Alfonso XIII.

Since his flight from Spain without abdicating, Alfonso XIII has visited at least half the kings now reigning, but not until last week did he find one willing to do him "royal honors." Coming from Jerusalem to Cairo, lean King Alfonso was received as such by the Egyptian Grand Chamberlain, whisked off to lunch with fat King Fuad.

Fuad, a British puppet, knows that Don Alfonso's wife (who was not reported with him last week) is in her own right a British Princess. In ordering "royal honors" for Alfonso, Puppet Fuad perhaps thought he was being smart, pleasing the British.

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