Lost Throne

Before Peiping fell to the Japanese in 1937, two hallowed objects were smuggled out of its ancient Forbidden City. About as easy to smuggle as a couple of dentists' chairs, they were an eight-foot, ten-inch white jade Buddhist pagoda (largest jade piece in the world), and a gold, lacquer and mother-of-pearl teakwood Dragon Throne on which Manchu emperors had sat from the 17th Century to the close of their reign. In great secrecy the pagoda and throne, (together valued at $3,000,000) were spirited out of China by coolie cart, mule train, river junk and railroad, across Siberia and thence to The Netherlands, where they were stored in the Amsterdam Municipal Museum. Thence, recently, Museum Director Fritz Loew-Beer sent them to the U. S. Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. wanted the pagoda and throne for an exhibition of Chinese treasures in Manhattan, to raise money for the War Orphans Fund of her good friend Mme Chiang Kaishek.

Last fortnight the pagoda got to Mrs. Roosevelt safe & sound, but the Dragon Throne failed to show up. She pottered around a customs warehouse looking for it, finally notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation, cabled Director Loew-Beer. Presently she received a reply. The director, still in smuggling mood, had addressed the throne to a friend in Oakland, Calif., which he innocently assumed was a suburb of New York. Mrs. Roosevelt and Holland America Line officials looked some more, found the imperial seat, not yet forwarded to "suburban" Oakland, in a crate on a dock in Hoboken, N. J. Last week the throne went on view, along with some 40 other objects, in Manhattan's Arden Gallery.

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