''Long Life!. Long Life!"
''Long Life!. Long Life!"
The chief mourners at murdered King Alexander's funeral last week brought their own soldiers. The soldiers brought plenty of ammunition for their own rifles. It was that kind of a Balkan funeral, grand and grim. Perhaps never until last week had all Europe escorted to his tomb with so much pomp and precaution a monarch only four generations in descent from a swineherd.
The French bombing planes of maximum size thundering in circles all day over Belgrade made sad-eyed French President Albert Lebrun feel safer. M. le President also had with him War Minister Marshal Petain, a company of steel-helmeted French infantry, 200 bluejackets and 50 picked detectives of the Surete Nationale.
As allies of France, Rumania and Czechoslovakia also sent bombing planes, partly to ensure the safety of Rumanian King Carol and Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Eduard Benes, partly to remind grief-stricken Jugoslavia of her treaty ties with France. So impressed was the Jugoslav Government that the official last words of King Alexander were amended last week from "Protect Jugoslavia!" to "Protect Jugoslavia and cherish our friendship with France"--no mean mouthful for a man dying of hemorrhage provoked by bullets (see p. 18).
Only major mourner to arrive without troops was Adolf Hitler's blustering Air Minister and Premier of Prussia, General Hermann Wilhelm Goering. He embarrassed everyone by hailing King Alexander as a dictator--which indeed His Majesty was--and strongly implying that the Jugoslav Government had friendly ties with Nazi Berlin. In ruthless, effective Balkan fashion the police of Belgrade proceeded to make Alexander's funeral safe. Over 6,500 suspects and near-suspects were thrown into jail. Lest someone try to take a crack at General Goring every German immigrant in the capital was put under house arrest. Despite incessant rains the carrying of umbrellas was barred. Ditto walking sticks and bouquets of flowers.
Unworn Crown. Pious Jugoslavs, shivering bareheaded in the chilling rain, prayed aloud in unison as the stately Orthodox service began in Belgrade Cathedral, pack-jammed with royalty, statesmen and the corps diplomatique. Weeping beside the Duke of Kent was Princess Marina. Her brother-in-law Prince Paul, Jugoslavia's pallid, scholarly Chief Regent, barely controlled his grief. On a high platform upon a great throne chair sat 11 year-old King Peter II, big-eyed, erect and at times somewhat puzzled. Below him lay his murdered father King Alexander I in a simple oak coffin.
In gorgeous, jewel-studded robes the Serbian Patriarch and his bishops celebrated with their priests and acolytes the complex rite of Orthodox High Mass. Sonorously the dead King's virtues were intoned: ''Courage! . . " soldierly simplicity! ... determination!" As the organ swelled a moving Orthodox dirge, sobs grew loud throughout the Cathedral. Scarcely able to stand as she left the service. Dowager Queen Marie of Jugoslavia tottered in the arms of her mother, Dowager Queen Marie of Rumania. Lest one or both should break down on the grueling three-mile funeral march a Ford sedan was held in readiness.
Outside the Cathedral there was a long cold wait. Nervously King Carol of Rumania approached Regent Prince Paul with a toothy, ingratiating smile and tried to chat. The Prince showed his displeasure. Still with the same smile, Mourner Carol turned to the President of France who froze him with a frown. After that there was nothing to do but wait until pallbearers carried out the casket, set it on a gun carriage.
Bereaved Marie of Jugoslavia stood as long as she could the sight of her son King Peter standing bareheaded in the rain, perhaps catching his death of cold. When she could stand it no longer Her Majesty motioned His Majesty to put on his cap, a handsome Sokol cap with a feather.
Eight dignitaries of the Court and officers of Jugoslavia's fighting services carried the emblems of King Alexander's power, his sword, his sceptre, the orb and the Crown of Jugoslavia with which he was never crowned. Reason: Alexander wished to unify his troubled country first.
As the procession moved off, Marie of Rumania gave out almost at once, had to be whisked off in the Ford. Marie of Jugoslavia, though suffering from gallstones and ulcerated teeth, trudged with visible effort the whole three miles. Young King Peter walked erect, alert but so closely surrounded by a protective square of Jugoslavian officers that at times he could not be seen.
Cried the people: "Zivio! Long Life! Slavu Mu! Glory To Him!"
Twenty-two trucks rumbled after the royal mourners with 15,000 wreaths. Of these 100 were said to be from "the foreign rulers and States." Ruler Roosevelt, the better to honor King Alexander, not only sent a wreath but promoted U. S. Minister Charles S. Wilson to the rank of Ambassador for just long enough to attend the funeral.
Nearly 100,000 peasants brought up the procession's rear in such native costumes as few countries besides Jugoslavia can produce. Her peasants of Turkish blood still wear the fez now banned in Turkey. With them strode Bosnians in scarlet dress and Herzegovinian mountaineers carrying their rifles upside down in mourning. Montenegro sent her Jugoslavian Cossacks.
"Father Is with God" Only three months before his assassination King Alexander completed on the hill of Oplenatz, 50 miles from Belgrade, a vast neo-Byzantine family tomb. Therein he installed his swineherd ancestor ''Black George," the peasant who became a bandit, then a general, and finally the "Liberator of Serbia." The mausoleum is in the form of a multidomed church with a crypt beneath for the royal Kara-Georgevitches, the descendants of Black George. Last week green lights burned in the crypt. When King Alexander's body, brought by train and motor hearse from Belgrade, was finally lowered to rest beside Black George, Dowager Queen Marie of Jugoslavia broke down completely and King Peter joined her sobs. Before that His Majesty had tried to comfort Her Majesty: "Mother, don't cry! Father is with God."
Next day, as kings and statesmen left Belgrade by train and as General Goring piloted his own trimotored plane back to Berlin, King Peter vanished into the guarded precincts of the Jugoslav Court and what he did there would have remained unknown had not the sister-in-law of one of his mother's ladies-in-waiting blabbed. According to Mrs. Slavko Gruitch (nee Mabel Dunlop of Clarksburg, W. Va.), the 11-year-old King broke the news of Alexander's death to his brothers Prince Tomislav, 7, and Prince Andreja, 5, who had been kept away from the funeral and told nothing whatever by anybody for the past two weeks.
"King Peter remembered," said Mrs. Gruitch, "that Tomislav and Andreja had been to the seashore often and played with toy boats. So Peter told his brothers that King Alexander had gone off in a ship to France and that the ship had struck a big wave, high as the palace. Their father, Peter said, is still in the waves. They will have to wait and he may not come back any more. "King Peter is an unspoiled, child of natural grace," wound up Mrs. Gruitch.
New Cabinet. As Chief Regent, pallid Prince Paul had his hands full last week when he opened King Alexander's political testament. The testament was couched in such terms that Prince Paul felt obliged to exact the resignation of Premier Uzunovitch who, of course, was furious.
As a dictator and an able one, King Alexander knew how to ride roughshod. He apparently believed that the Regency should take a more moderate line, attempt to form a Cabinet of National Union.
For 24 hours the Chief Regent tried to find a statesman who could swing this ticklish job. He failed last week and was finally obliged to call back smouldering Uzunovitch. As Premier, Uzunovitch retained pro-French Foreign Minister Bogoljub Jeftitch and acquired a notable War Minister, General Pera Zivkovitch who was Dictator of Jugoslavia from 1929 to 1932.
Meanwhile the Court scandal of the decade vortexed around General Alexander Dimitriejevitch, Marshal of the Court who accompanied King Alexander to Marseille. "He should have committed suicide since he failed to protect King Alexander's life!" cried officers of the Royal Guard. "Instead of that he returns to take up his post as the guardian of King Peter as though nothing had happened!"
Something promptly happened. General Dimitriejevitch was dismissed as Marshal of the Court, pensioned off in disgrace on half pay.
Master Mind. In addition to the three accomplices of Assassin Vlada Georgieff who were caught fortnight ago in France, the Jugoslav and French detectives working on the case last week got track of the murder gang's "master mind." He proved to be the onetime Croat Deputy they had suspected from the first, burly, square-jawed Dr. Ante Pavelitch (TIME, Oct. 22).
Before he could be caught "Master Mind" Pavelitch had slipped over into Italy. The Italian police detained him at Turin, refused to let him be quizzed by agents of the French Surete Nationale who loudly protested to High Heaven and Benito Mussolini. Obviously Il Duce cannot take the chance of a French frame-up to plant responsibility for the crime in Italy or her protege Hungary.. Last week there was distinct danger that on this issue Jugoslavia might prefer charges before the League. A bit too precipitously Premier General Julius Goemboes of Hungary flared "We are innocent! We can prove it."
In Belgrade foreign ministers of the Little Entente (Jugoslavia, Rumania and Czechoslovakia) held a joint meeting for the first time with their peers of the Balkan Entente (Turkey, Jugoslavia, Greece and Rumania). In guarded language, well (Continued on p. 20) knowing that they were treading on diplomatic egg shells charged with dynamite, they issued an affirmation of the duty of all states to cooperate in preventing political assassinations. Informally they then discussed with correspondents the many rumors that terrorists, escaped from Jugoslavia, have been harbored in Hungary in circumstances suggesting that their keep might have been paid by Italians who felt that King Alexander was too stanch a bulwark against Il Duce's aspirations in the Adriatic.
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