"The King is Furious"

It was permitted to leak from, the Court of St. James's last week that "The King is furious." Never to date has the Sailor King seen why for the sake of some blackamoors his beloved war ships should be risked in the Mediterranean. The British Royal Family is on definitely friendly terms with the Italian Royal Family. As a friend, George V is stanch, and the salty admirals who are the King's cronies over late Scotch nightcaps have never considered the League worth a brave man's belch.

Last week Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, after making Sir Samuel Hoare a political scapegoat in the House of Commons and generally making an exhibition of himself (see p. 12), was summoned to Buckingham Palace. That he and other members of the Cabinet were rebuked in the strongest terms by the King for having made a dangerous mess was an impression publicly strengthened when Squire Baldwin emerged with black and discouraged looks. He was later observed to behave snappishly to his devoted wife Lucy, famed for her pious confidence that whatever Stanley does is but the indirect working of Divine Providence.

The King, being to all appearances convinced that Italo-Ethiopian peace must be made by negotiation and not by surrender if another World War is to be avoided, made himself clear to the Nation this week by according Sir Samuel Hoare an hour's private audience. Such a British honor would have been unthinkable if the King had been shocked or morally revolted as Leagophiles were by "The Deal'' of Hoare & Laval.

That danger to British war ships in the Mediterranean is far more real than most of the King's subjects have been permitted to know, appeared this week from belated disclosures by the Admiralty, the Foreign Office and indignant representatives at Geneva of the lesser nations of Eastern Europe. In recent weeks British diplomatic and financial pressure induced Turkey, the Little Entente and Greece verbally to promise Mr. Eden at Geneva that their armed aid could be counted on by Britain were she attacked. The little states were asked to pass this on to Benito Mussolini but declined. Thereat Britain conveyed the information to Il Duce anyhow, with the unexpected result that Italy redoubled her threats and Britain agreed to "The Deal"--only to repudiate it afterward and leave Turkey, the Little Entente and Greece bitterly complaining to Geneva correspondents this week that they had been used as cats-paws by the British Lion. The meat of these disclosures was that Premier Mussolini had convinced the British Admiralty that if oil or other crucial sanctions be applied he would loose his air bombs upon Britain's fleet in the Mediterranean, even though the Lion might have secured as allies all the cats in Eastern Europe.

Hungary, Austria and Switzerland, impotent kittens, disclosed that the Lion had also asked their '"military aid'' as "a duty to the League," should Britain be attacked. The kittens, being the Fascist Eagle's immediate neighbors, announced that Great Britain can expect no succor from them by land, sea or air.

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