Home to Kabul

King Amanullah and Queen Thuraya of Afghanistan emerged, last week, from Soviet Russia. From Moscow via the Crimea and the Black Sea they came to Constantinople, then plunged inland to Angora, the new capital of the Turkish Republic. There King Amanullah, called "The Peace of God" had his hand warmly shaken and both cheeks soundly kissed by the Ghazi, "The Victorious One," President Mustafa Kemal Pasha.

Soon costly and significant gifts were bestowed upon the Royal Afghans. For Queen Thuraya two Angora cats of super-best breed, next an even softer, silkier present: a pile of rugs made from the pelts of famed and rare Angora goats.

For King Amanullah an album studded with jewels. Peering within His Majesty beheld photographs of Angora as a muddy, nondescript village, which it was in 1920, when the Young Turks set up their capital there to be out of reach of Allied War boats. Naturally the album contained other photographs. But these showed only what King Amanullah could see about him: the New Angora, a city of four, six and eight-story buildings, still raw and unlovely, yet proving that at last an Asiatic people is making swift, dynamic progress.

Amid ensuing festivities at Angora, members of the Afghan suite divulged details of their Russian tour (TIME, May 14) which were suppressed at the time by the Soviet Censor.

At Moscow, they said, King Amanullah flatly refused to participate in a scheduled presentation of 49 combat planes to the Red Air Force, when he learned that the planes had been purchased from the so-called Reply To Chamberlain Fund.

In Moscow, at the Lenin Institute, King Amanullah listened placidly, while the Director of the Institute informed him in Russian that he, Amanullah, "is an enlightened monarch who will never tolerate the domination of Great Britain over Afghanistan." When these words were translated to His Majesty in Persian he frowned deeply and said in his reciprocal oration: "I was tremendously impressed by much of what I saw in England (TIME, March 26). . . . I am convinced of the good will of the British Empire toward Afghanistan."

Very different was the attitude of King Amanullah, in Angora last week, when President Mustafa Kemal Pasha cried, in the course of a ringing public address,: "Our nations are sisters! . . . Turkey stands ready to perform her duties toward Afghanistan."

Replied His Majesty, altering only the sex of the metaphor: "Afghanistan, too, stands ready to accomplish all brotherly duties toward Turkey!"

Thereupon, a treaty of alliance between Turkey & Afghanistan was signed, and shortly afterward the King & Queen set out for Afghanistan and their own capital, Kabul.