Train in the Balkans

PRINCESS PRO TEM--Arthur Train-- Scribner.

In his novel Puritan's Progress (1931) Author Train credited U. S. Puritans with having a sense of mirthless humor that is a kind of coal-tar derivative from their "keen scent for the fumes of Hell." In contradistinction to this darkling humor he sets "gaiety, the most comprehensive of virtues, for it signifies faith, hope, charity and courage." In Princess Pro Tern he tosses all four ingredients generously into the potboiler, serves up a book that, whatever its faults, is gay.

A gay old rascal is Stephan Stephanovitch, absolute monarch of the minor Balkan kingdom of Illyria, as he sits in his shirtsleeves in the Royal Palace of Zeta playing chess with General Kosovo, his Prime Minister. Illyria is in a sad state of affairs. A foreign loan must be floated somehow, and without signing away the vast undeveloped oilfields at Tokar. Questions of the royal succession are also troubling Stephan. His eldest son Dushan had renounced his royal birthright to marry an American, and now is dead. Milan, the present Crown Prince, who shoots horses out of his way rather than walk around them, is suspected of conniving with Italy to hand over the Tokar oilfields, is suspected of being a bastard as well. Prince Marko, a pretender, also threatens to make the Illyrian throne rock as soon as the huge, aging Stephan steps down.

Prime Minister Kosovo broaches a plan. Why not bring Dushan's U. S. daughter to Illyria, establish the royal succession on her, spike Marko's revolutionary guns by marrying her off to him? This innocent suggestion precipitates a cloudburst of consequences. Helen Stevens the innocent U. S. princess, John Brent a U. S. oil man, the weazely Sloat, knightly bandits, politicians, Tsernagorean guards are soon embroiled in a terrific free-for-all from which Helen finally emerges in John Brent's arms asking for an ice-cream soda and a passage home.

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