Magnanimous Liaptcheff

Returning from a weighty conference at the summer palace of Little Tsar Boris, frugal Prime Minister Andrei Liaptcheff last week bounced in the back seat of his ancient, rattling limousine while his chauffeur wheeled the car down the rutty road to Sofia. Near Varna, not far from the palace, the Liaptcheff limousine swerved round a curve, slewed against the glossy high-wheeled cart of a rich Bulgarian peasant.

Prime Minister's limousine and peasant's cart plunged side by side down the road for 20 yards, the peasant sawing at his horses' mouths, shouting bristling Bulgarian obscenities in a voice like the ripping of an oak plank. Finally with his horses but not his temper under control, the farmer pulled a big, black, Balkan pistol from his waistband, punctuated his curses with bullets. Shots riddled the windshield and the rear windows of the Liaptcheff car. Only by sliding prudently to the floor did Bulgaria's Prime Minister keep his skin whole.

"Miserable dog!" screamed Minister Liaptcheff's chauffeur as the fusillade ended. "You will hang for this! You have fired on the Prime Minister of Bulgaria!"

Terror-struck, the peasant blanched to his bristling eyebrows, whipped up his horses, fled across country.

In Sofia Minister Liaptcheff learned that his assailant had been arrested. He pondered a while, then sent this message: "I can understand the man's anger. It was largely my fault. ... I refuse to prosecute."*

* Magnanimous, too, last week, was immaculate Grover Whalen, Manhattan's debonair chief policeman. On Park Row one Prescott Robinson, ebullient young surface car trackwalker, "gave the bird" (burbled offensively with fat tongue in loose lips) to Commissioner Whalen's gleaming motor. Detective Carl Lynn leaped from the Commissioner's side, arrested the burbling trackwalker, haled him to police headquarters. Like Minister Liaptcheff Commissioner Whalen "refused to prosecute."