"You Snake!"

Up from the long blue Cabinet Bench in the Spanish Cortes sprang portly, white- mustached old Premier Alejandro Lerroux last week, choking and trembling with rage.

"Serpiente!" ("You snake!") he hissed at grinning Socialist Leader Indalecio Prieto, then whirled upon Spain's great radical Republican, Don Manuel Azana. "Hombre de talento pero desalmado!" ("You man with a brain but no soul!")

Certainly Don Manuel, chunky and relentless, has no heart, no pity for his enemies. He ruled Spain as Premier for all but a few weeks of the past two years, was abruptly dropped as "too radical" by chubby, Church-loving President Niceto Alcala Zamora (TIME, Sept. 18). Last week new Premier Lerroux, a Bryanesque idealist, had held office for 21 days, had never dared to ask a vote of confidence from the Cortes and still dared not ask one. He knew that in a straight vote Man-With-No-Soul Azana and Snake Prieto would soon beat him. Wringing his hands, he announced the resignation of his Conservative Cabinet, started to walk out of the Cortes, jeered by Deputies who demanded that he stay and be voted down.

"I will not stay!" cried the badgered Premier, bursting into tears as he left the Cortes. "I cannot permit myself to be made one of those carnival rag dolls at which the public throw balls."

Since the Cabinet had resigned it could not, under Spain's Constitution, be voted down, but Socialist Speaker Julian Besteiro ignored the Constitution, encouraged the excited Cortes to vote "no confidence" 189 to 91.

Seemingly this two-to-one swift kick at the vanishing posterior of ex-Premier Lerroux convinced President Alcala Zamora that the Cortes was incorrigibly radical, must be dissolved to give the Spanish people a chance to elect new Deputies. For months Conservatives have been urging this course, predicting a Conservative landslide. To hold the election the President needed a "strong" Premier. He spent the week trying to find one, called in successively a wealthy young jurist, Felipe Sanchez Roman; crafty former Finance Minister Jose Manuel Pedregal; Dr. Gregorio Maranon, onetime physician to Alfonso XIII and a great advocate of birth control; Dean Posada of the Madrid Law School and finally--when all these had found the Premier's seat too hot-- chose an old guard, conservative political boss, Don Diego Martinez Barrios.

To Premier Barrios the President handed a decree dissolving the Cortes "on moral grounds" and setting Nov. 19 as the date for a general election. Promptly the powerful Socialist trade unions threatened to declare a general strike in Madrid.

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