Bribe, Scandal, Plot, Doom

Few Spaniards took alarm last September when perennial Premier Alejandro Lerroux resigned once more and passed the Government to his fellow Radical (actually Conservative) Joaquin Chapaprieta. But all Spain sat up last week when Monarchist Deputies screamed in the Cortes that Lerroux's resignation had come immediately after President Niceto Alcala Zamora received a letter from a Mexican gambler and promoter named Daniel Straus who unfolded a strange and scandalous story of 2,000,000 pesetas worth of bribes to bigwigs of Lerroux's party.

Promoter Straus had a patented electric roulette wheel, wanted to open casinos at San Sebastian and Formentor. When both his casinos were raided, he asked for his money back. A parliamentary commission investigated his charges, reported last week with gravity that they had reason to believe that Lerroux's Nephew Aurelio, his onetime Minister of the Interior Rafael Salazar Alonso and half a dozen other Radicals had taken Straus's money. Old Lerroux, his white mustaches trembling with rage, replied that it was a fiendish Monarchist plot to split Spain's Centre coalition. Mexican Straus could not be found last week anywhere but, amid Monarchist chortles, Premier Chapaprieta's Cabinet seemed doomed.

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