Knights Must Play

Through the mist and murk of a London night two bobbies assigned to patrol Hyde Park tiptoed up to within four yards of a gentleman and a young woman who were together upon two park chairs. The hour, as the bobbies later testified, was precisely 9:45. The persons on the chairs were, in the opinion of the constables, "behaving in a manner reasonably likely to offend against public decency." Therefore strong hands were laid upon the young woman, who remained passive, and upon the gentleman, who roared: "Hands off! I'm not the usual riffraff! I'm a man of substance!"

So violent did the gentleman become that a third bobby had to be called to subdue him, whereupon he implored: "For God's sake, let me go!"

Next morning smart folk of London's West End were scandalized to learn that the "man of substance" was indeed "no riff-raff," but instead their acquaintance or friend Sir Leo Chiozza Money, 57, one-time Parliamentary Secretary to David Lloyd George, author of the British convoy system during the World War.

Worse still, Sir Leo's arrest seemed significant of a distressing trend, for it came as the fourth of a series of similar arrests of British Knights with young women in Hyde Park. The other Knights are Sir Basil Home Thomson, onetime Chief of the Criminal Investigation Bureau of Scotland Yard (TIME, Dec. 28, 1925), secondly Sir Arthur Evans, famed archeologist, discoverer of buried civilizations in Crete, and most reprehensively of all Sir Almeric Fitzroy, onetime Clerk of His Majesty's Privy Council and intimate of that late & lusty monarch Edward VII.

Therefore, when Sir Leo Chiozza Money came up for trial, last week, in Marlborough Street Police Court, patriotic Britons hoped against hope that he would be able to vindicate his honor and unsmirch in some degree the deplorable record of the Knightage and Hyde Park.

Sir Leo began by testifying that the young woman with whom he was arrested, Miss Irene Savage, lives at home with her parents, has been for the past four and a half years steadily employed as a tester of radio bulbs, and is engaged to marry, said Sir Leo: "That young man over there!"

The Court inspected the young man. He seemed alert, intelligent. Sir Leo stated that his own actions on the night in question were merely to take Miss Savage, 22, whom he had known about six months, to dinner, and later to stroll & sit with her in the park. The Court looked again upon the young man, pondered, proceeded to acquit Sir Leo & Miss Savage, and lastly assessed costs of -L-10 ($49) against the two too officious bobbies. As Miss Savage left the court the young man swept her into his arms and hugged.