/'7T —% A tale ol the devious ways of diplomacy in the old days comes from Moscow. Theyfve been making some alterations in the Kremlin, the Russian White House - or I suppose you'd call it the Communist Red House. Working men tearing down a room found a false wall, and this concealed a hiding place for - secret agents. The main room was always alloted to visiting foreign ambassadors. The secret agents were tucked away to spy on them, and they could overhear the foreign diplomats in confidential talk, the walls of the partition s | a H I! were so thinl TrtTSSOLINI Over in Italy the Black Shirt Government is strong ■£ for having people stay on the land. Mussolini regards the farmer as the most valuable element in the community. So, they decided to hand out prizes to every family that could prove if ill i I t I that it had been on the same farm for a hundred years. The prises have just been distributed. A whole legion of Italian peasants stepped up and showed ^their^families had been cultivating * the same patch of earth for a century or more. And some of the families were able to prove that they had been on the same farm for five hundred years, and in several cases even a thousand years. The government had not provided any prizes for such age-long instances of staying on the farm, so Mussolini, himself, dug down in his own pocket and forked over special awards of cash. ASSASSINATION The police in Europe are still sleuthing and quizzing If along the trail of King Alexander»s assassination. Naturally, with a crime of such international magnitude, police activity in the things various countries keeps ■stirring for'a long time. il And now a startling report comes along, with the questioning of a sweetheart of one of the ^prisoners under arrest. She tells of what they call a terror farm, a farm used as a training field for assassins. It was bought by Hungarian army officers in nineteen thirty-one,And turned over to Croatian^ terrorists. TheA^ political killers, were tiled in the murderous art of getting their victim -.and the victim was King Alexander. The sweetheart of the conspirator concludes by declaring that every day a class in terrorism had target practice, and the target they shot at was no mere bull’s eye, but a dummy of King Alexander of 'I 1 Jugoslavia SIAM 'i'here's something curiously pathetic about the little King over in London small, smiling, dapper and exceedingly Oriental. He's fighting against blindness, also to retain his royal poser. Slam^has a fantastic history. -The tranquil unworldliness of Buddhist monks in contrast with crimes* treacheries and cruelties. An apex of singularity came when the King Praijfca&ipGk became afflicted with a malady of the eyes, cataracts, and was in danger of going blind. That had sent him to the physicians of the ¥/est for treatment. The small, yellow monarch, who seems like a miniature of a man, v/as educated at Oxford and Harvard. He has Western ideas. Most of us will recall his visit to the United States several years ago, when King Pra^jalj^ipok and his Queen Rambaibarni made the headlines day_ after day. They tell how a couple of newspaper men took hi® ,to a speakeasy of those prohibition times. The jovial journalists introduced him to the bartender as "The King of Siam". The bartender had heard things like that before. With a growl he asked his journalist friends what they would have — then, snapped, "And what will it ce for m SIAM- - ® the little runt?" His Majesty fra4.|tedipok. King of Siam, blinked for a moment at the shock to his royal dignity an* grinned - "Make A- it a Sc&otch and soda.” On his return to Siam, after iris American visit, he started s >ei*ies of political reforms along the lines of western liberalism And that caused plenty of controversy in^ Then on top of it all the king* s eyes began to go bad again. So once more he had to journey west to consult the eye specialists — this time to England. And now, in his absent, opposition and intrigue is flaring in Siam, ^he ministers of .the government are trying to curb the royal x^ov;er, and the battle is being fought out by radiogram between Bangkok and London. The ministers issued *a decree taking from the King both the right to inflict the death penalty and the power to pardon people sentenced to death. When Pra4jfcadlpok was informed of this, he immediately j .lashed back a A threat to abdicate. His secretary in London explains that the King doesn't particularly care about the right to inflict the if i: i death penalty, but he does insist upon keeping the po..er of pardon a — so that ifc he can prevent the governing party out there from Iti 3 summarily doing away with its opponents. His threat to resign has made his ministers back down. The people of Siam, particularly the army, are staunchly in favor of the little monarch who is fighting blindness in London. Popular meetings have been held, pledging support to him, and they say the Siamese ary has cabled a declaration of loyalty. Meanwhile, King P i ii|J»iiit1i|irt>j in the hands of the eye A" A * ' specialists in London, doesnft seem to care so much whether he gives up his throne or not. Perhaps, with his eyesight at stake, light or darkness, his crown doesnTt seem so very important. INDIA The King of Siam must be interested in the Maharajah of Gondal, if he knows about that potentate of Hindustan. The Manarajah is a doctor, not an oriental witch doctor dispensing powdered toads' livers or snake tooth amulets, but a physician out of the European medical schools. The-medical Maharajah is now celebrating his Fiftieth Anniversary as ruler and doctor of his subjects and patients. Many years ago, the glittering potentates of India stood shocked and aghast when they heard that the young prince, heir to the throne of Gondal, had determined to study the Englishman’s medicine. Everybody was opposed. The young prince disappeared. He was away for five years, studying in the medical schools of Scotland. Then he returned. He was almost an outcast, but no one could contest his right to the throne, so when his father died.he-b^eama He proceeded to make his kingdom sanitary. And that shocked the sensibilities of the orthodox Hindus. He compelled the women of his court to hnveil. He said the habit of veiling women in India was unsanitary. He was cobra - until the bubonic plague came sweeping like popular as a INDIA - 2 the sickle ox death. That was when the Maharajah-of-medicine came into his own. Me rushed the sick to hospitals^^^S trained A C* • '»y nurses to take care of them^dispensed medicines right and left. His subjects wei e his patients. In plague time he was not a prince of India riding on a panoplied, but a physician caring for the sick. He checked the ravages of the bubonic sickness. Victoria, Queen Empress, decorated him for his work. And what about his subjects? Well, in celebrating his Fiftieth Anniversary,^they*ve just given him his weight in gold* tmd Tt ■w^jlgiiOwggwerr^T &yJ} rik ■wfrfi —1 ft? fifty thousand dollars’ worth.^He has turned ^ over to a hospital. & IN5ULL 5 | The Insull case in Chiaago has been wending its way through mazes of figures, charts, financial theoMes and stock market reports. XtTs one of the most lmposingvlair trials on record, and was expected to be one of the m*st sensational* However, public interest has been lost in a bristling tangle of industrial, financial and bookkeeping technicalities* Today, however, the turning point was‘reached, a development which we can understand without a treatise.on debits and credits, holding companies and subsidiaries. The prosecution has rested its case* It had been expected that there would be at least two more weeks of testimony against Samuel Insull, volumes more of thorny complications seeking tp prove that he was guilty in the eyes of the law in the collapse of the vast Insull empire of utilities* But the prosecuting .attorneys'have decided that they have already shown enough, have^ brought forward enough evidence m to convict. So they rested their*case today. . „ „_„ , the turn of the defense It*s Insull s move now*; s to bring forward its own bewilderments concerning stock transfers, dividends, bond issues and the abracadabra of ledgers and ! * u balance sheets. STOLL It’s a rare thing to find the parents of mls-doers involved in a crime case. That gave an unusual angle to the Stoll kidnapping affair, in which the father of the kidnapper was arrested* Robinson, the kidnapper, is still at large* The man—hunt for him has been futile thus far* vRut the government has had two prisoners — the criminal's wife, who helped to guard and take care of Mrs* Gtoll- and, h&e > fat her, arrested *> - •' a . a for complicity. They suspected the father had lent his son a hand. But tonight there's only one prisoner, Mrs. Robinson, the wife. Thismorning a United States commissioner ruled that the elderly Robinson was not a participant in the || There was a brief hearing in 'which the commissioner announced that | the evidence was not sufficient to hold the aged, retired contractor* So Robinson, Senior^ was discharged from the twenty-five thousand dollar bail, on which he had been held. I CHAIN STORES I! The Government is faced with a rather paradoxical situation in that Atlantic and Pacific labor trouble. It seems clear that there is no dispute about pay or work between the big chain of grocery stores and its employees. The question % is entirely one of unionization. Heports tall that the men are eager to get their jobs back, but the company declares that it will close its scores in the places where the trouble is on rather than face the difficultiesxhy the union, demands. Just now the shut-down is concentrated in Ohio, where three hundred 1 If I:; II II i M.J stores are closed and twenty-two hundred A* and P. employees are idle. But the company seems in the mood to close its stores everywhere if the demands for full unionization persist^* A. and P. officials claim that the clerks and the store managers don't want to bawe a collective bargaining organization. But the unions called out the unionized wagon drivers and the meat cutters. And the w« stores c.an-t operate in the face of the walk-out * r. ■; i It'S another case for the Labor Relations Board, a parties- . , u nf. the sort of thing that has come up out larly thorny instance of,®°isions of the N. R. A. of the collective bargain provisions ox MODELS TriOi ^ are overtures of peace in the war between the models and the dehs, A confeience is scheduled to be* held at the Waldorf— tomorrow, with the girls who pose professiona^^irking it out with the society girls, who pose for fun. This announcement follows a fashion!st play, with the debs' doing the modeling and the models doing the picketing. In a' full array fia of loveliness and finery, the models paraded in front of the ■ exhibition, and all the male customers trying to enter appeared to be perfectly willing to stop and chat with the models concerning their wrongs - something new in the history of labor troubles ano. picketing. r' KINGSFORD^SMITH Two amazing things about Klngsford-Smith. One Is Klngsford- I n CrS^s £s two -olanes, the rebuilt Smith himself and the other ^ the Southern Cross,, hie-..planC< IIo^ flying the raoifla in tha-tr-same~^14--Qon.traption"-that liu~patel^ed togothej Really, the Southern remains of a couple of cracked up wrecks which Kingsford-Smith bought ! I from Sir Hubert Wilkins, the sky pilot of the Arctic. The Southern i i I Cross has the wings and motor of one plane grafted on to the fuselage of another. chunk Yet, she is a mighty staunch old job, that venturesomejRfcjasuek | of aircraft. She carried Kingsford-Smith on his great flight from California to Australia, just the reverse of the one he’s mak.^g new. And he flew the Southern Cross in his two-year cloud voyage around the world — also on his trans-Atlantic hop from Ireland to Newfoundland four years ago. Time and again Kingsford-Smith has tried to sell the old girl. It's been rather a joke the way he has tried to unload the venerable airplane on to his friends. He says caused i i -t-vio-f would, cover his fan mail she nas Kwst . he would accept any price that wouic - ^ /\ him to get. It has taken a lot of postage stairps to answer all the admiring letters the mail man has brought to the hero of the oceanic kt - jcsford - smith - g B skies - several hundred dollars' worth. And nobody has ever been willing to give him as much as several hundred dollars for the Southern Cross. Yi^> he,s flying again, across the Pacific - Australia, Fiji Islands, Honolulu, California. And he landed at Honolulu today two hops out of three and one to go, and it's a long one - twenty-four hundred miles, from Wheeler Field at Honolulu to the Oakland airport on the outskirts of 0 P r I I 1 I train That streamline train was only a beginning. We'll see plenty Hi more of them streaking along the railroad tracks. Seven more will be built immediately out of P.W.A. funds. The Public Works Administration has allotted two hundred million dollars to the railroads, and thatfs where the money will come from to build the new flotilla of streamline speedsters. Five of the ma^or railroads will have them for service in all parts of the country. And they say that as these seven trains are turned out, one after another, each will be faster than the previous one. So the record set by the first coast to coast streamline train** last week probably wont stand long. The spe'ed record before that one stood for almost thirty years, but now it wont be long before another stream lln„ - | A A fifty-five minutes from Los Angeles to Manhattan. * HORSE And they’re even streamlining horses nowadays. The Agricultural Department of the Canadian National Railways declares tnat old Dorbin. the draft horse, will have to conform to those slinky, speedy, modern lines. The horse breeders in England have changed their ideal of how a ^/p,rk-horse should be shaped. They’ve always gone in for ponderosity, massiveness of muscle and bulky weight. But now they’re trying to get lines of swiftness in horses for heavy work - lighter, faster, streamlined draft horses. The Shire type of bulging beast used- to be the most popular, but now A it's the Clydesdale, with its slinkier proportions. Yes, they’re streamlining everything nowadays — streamlined e«d-o£ a-frors^ thing ye**- fmir