Dictators' Wives

The role of reigning queens though splendorous is indefinite. Their duty to the State may be irreproachably discharged by mere male bearing.* Even more nebulous is the aggregate contribution to statecraft of the wives of Premiers, Ministers and Opposition leaders. They are too numerous to be counted, and too much at cross purposes to be broadly significant. But today a new class of august women loom as worthy of inspection. They are the Consorts of the world's six major Dictators. Theirs is the simplified problem and the dazzling opportunity of swaying a nation by persuading, cajoling or nagging at one man.

Senorita Mercedes Castellanos achieved politest world renown (TIME, April 23) when it was announced at Madrid that she, an orphan & a spinster of 47, would shortly be taken to wife by the Dictator of Spain, General Don Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja, Marquis de Estella, 58.

Last week Senorita Castellanos became an even more piquant and challenging figure. In highest Spanish circles it was rumored that her marriage, although announced for next September, is about to take place secretly in Madrid. That the Dictator-Bridegroom can compel the Spanish press to keep his most obvious secrets was shown, last week, when he suppressed for three days a newspaper at smart San Sebastian which had dared to print a photograph revealing that the calves & ankles of Senorita Mercedes Castellanos are chunky and unslender--as are those of Queen Thuraya of Afghanistan (see Afghanistan).

Whatever the date of Dictator Primo de Rivera's wedding, Spaniards are relieved that he has chosen definitely, at last, among the too many ladies who have sought through him to sway the course of Spain. There was, for example, very recently, the Marquise de Arguelles. Perhaps it is well that her somewhat sinister influence will be supplanted by that of the Orphan & Spinster--who is one of the richest women in Spain, and accounted sage with the wisdom that comes from managing large monetary affairs.

Not since Dictators came recently into fashion has one married. Therefore the nuptials of Primo de Rivera loom as an unique event and focus the attention of alert, contemplative minds upon what manner of women are now deemed fit to be Dictators' wives:

Rachele Guidi Mussolini once served as a lusty taproom wench at the rustic inn of good Papa Allesandro Mussolini, sire of Benito. Wise Papa Allesandro warned the wench against his son. "Do not let yourself think of that young man," he is said to have said, "It would be better to throw yourself under a train. Married to him you will have neither happiness nor peace."

Precisely when and how Rachele Guidi and Benito Mussolini were married is still a topic for active speculation. A delayed civil marriage appears to have been followed by a still further delayed religious ceremony. But the union was fruitful from the first. Daughter Edda Mussolini is now 17, son Vittorio, 11, son Bruno 10, and Babe Romano Mussolini is aged six months.

When months are cold, placid Donna Rachele Mussolini dwells with her children in Milan; but with approaching spring she moves out to the Mussolini estate at Forli, where, each summer, Il Duce indulges in a brief fit of farm labor which he calls "fighting the battle of the grain." At such times, and during the Christmas and Easter visits of Signor Mussolini to Milan, it is possible that he is persuaded, cajoled, nagged. But he is only known to have yielded once. On this occasion--just prior to the birth of Babe Romano--Donna Mussolini begged and received a decree of amnesty for some arrested antiFascists who hailed from her native village.

Alexandra Sczerbinska Pilsudska is the second wife of Poland's swashbuckling Marshal and benevolent Dictator, Josef Pilsudski.

Since the stirring days when Pilsudski was engaged in clandestine Socialist activities, he has been assisted by the present Madame Pilsudska, a woman of culture, charm and quickening ideas. Gifted with a pliant temperament, she got on excellently well with the Marshal's first wife, the late Maria Litinska Pilsudska, who was her husband's first collaborator in the secret and dangerous work of putting forth a Socialist newspaper Robotnik (The Workman) under the pre-War Tsarist regime in Poland.

The present Mme. Pilsudska dwells principally at rural Sulejowek, 12 miles from Warsaw, where she provides a quiet soothing refuge to which her harassed and moody husband often flees. With her young daughters, Wanda and Hedwig, she assists the Marshal to prune his apple trees and tend his bees.*

Mysterious Madame Stalin is the enigma of Soviet Russian journalism. Her close-mouthed Asiatic husband, Dictator Josef Stalin, was born in what is now the Soviet Republic of Georgia and has all the liking for concealment of his family affairs which would be expected in an Oriental.

Dictator and Wife dwell with their only child in rooms of spartan simplicity within the frowning, huge-walled Kremlin. No Soviet news organ, magazine or book is permitted to reveal personal news of this seclusive Caesar's wife.

The Divorced Wives of Dictator Mustafa Kemal Pasha of Turkey are: first the great Halide Edib Hanoum, foremost Turkish feminist; and secondly the plump and pretty Latife Hanoum, winsome, vivacious, rich.

Kemal was, of course, the second husband of Halide Edib. She perhaps kindled the first elemental spark of his present passion for Occidentalizing Turkey. But long before the fire burned, Kemal and Halide had parted. She divorced him when he proposed to take a second wife under the old polygamous law of Turkey. Paradoxically he turned to this same old law when he wished to divorce his second wife, and accomplished the deed simply by repeating three times the traditional formula: "I divorce you." Shortly thereafter the new Turkish code, containing Occidentally stringent divorce laws, came into effect.

The Seven Wives and 23 concubines of Marshal Chang Tso-lin, picturesque and barbaric Dictator of North China, recently included a thoroughgoing English woman and a slim young person from the U. S. The majority of Chang's wives and concubines are Chinese, but there are two Opposition factions made up of Japanese and Russians. Of late Dictator Chang is said to have paid more attention to opium than to his parliament of wives.

High Opinion. To scan the list of Dictators' consorts is to wonder what their husbands think of them. Not long ago Signor Benito Mussolini, the epitome of Dictatorship, gave the following High Opinion:

"What do I think of marriage? That it is a necessary institution, a contract to be entered into between a man and a woman for the good of the State, and for that reason it should never be dissolved, so long as they both live.

"Flirtations should be indulged in as frequently as possible up to the age of 40, then a man should settle down to more stable amusements, such as work.

"What more agreeable than the enthusiasm a woman knows how to awaken in a man? What more charming, thrilling than the first kiss; what brings a more profound sigh of relief than the last?

"The power behind the throne? No, woman is not that. No great man has ever beep inspired to greatness by a woman's unseen power. . . .

"Men are inspired by ambition or conviction; their desires to accomplish something in the world are purely selfish. If you could look into the soul of every man you meet in the course of a day, no vision of a woman would, be enshrined there. No woman ever penetrates to the soul of a man, despite all things said to the contrary. . . . Left in their proper relation to man women are all that is delicious, adorable, sensuous. They are, in a large sense, necessary to our physical wellbeing. . . ."

* Leading empresses and queens in descending order of the number of males they have borne are:

Victoria Mary, Queen-Empress of Great Britain 4

Victoria Eugenie, Queen of Spain 4

Elizabeth, Queen of Belgium 2

Victoria, Queen of Sweden 2

Alexandrine, Queen of Denmark 2

Marie, Queen of Jugoslavia 2

Elena, Queen of Italy 1

Maud, Queen of Norway 1

* "I cannot comprehend," Marshal Pilsudski has said, "how the drones can make all the other bees work."