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"Robust in figure, his round bullet head and piercing eyes marked the man of resolution and leadership. He was, it seemed, onetime (Oct. 3, 1922 to March 16, 1926) Premier Antonin Svehla, one of the .pioneers who with Thomas Garrigue Masaryk and Edouard Benes took the new state into their strong hands when the Empire of Austria-Hungary crumbled and the hour of Czechoslovak freedom dawned. An Agrarian, and sympathetic to the Germans, he would be the very man to lead the new coalition cabinet. That afternoon the papers carried an announcement of his appointment as premier by President Masaryk; and he at once called into his cabinet the first Germans ever to enter a Czechoslovak government: Professor Mayr-Hartung of the University of Prague and the German Agrarian Professor Spina, as Minister of Public Works. As expected, Foreign Minister Benes retained his post.*
"By way of topping off the day in Prague I ascended the Hradcany Hill and visited there the vast palace of the ancient kings of Bohemia and the Cathedral of St. Vitus in which they were wont to be crowned."
Belgrade, Jugoslavia. "Soon after leaving Prague our air pilot picked up the Danube and flew down some 500 miles with the river as a guide to Belgrade. The city seemed poor and unimpressive after Prague, but I spent a pleasant morning in the spacious Kalemegdan gardens overlooking the Danube. From there we could see the Citadel on which modern and still more modern forts have been built since the 3rd century B. C.
"Strolling back through the Usun Mirkova Uliza (street) I reflected that the Jugoslavs (Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) are perpetually faced with their minority problem which is chiefly provided by the Croats. It came as no surprise to learn that the fiery Croat leader Stefan Raditch had again caused the fall of Premier Uzunovitch's Cabinet by charging its members with corruption, as he did last spring (TIME, April 26). Since this was the second time in succession that M. Uzunovitch had been forced to resign by the public accusations of Stefan Raditch, interest ran high as to whom King Alexander would next call to the Premiership.
"The King did not make up his mind last week, but many expected him to call upon either Dr. Nintchitch* who has shown great ability of late as Foreign Minister, or upon the old war horse Premier Pashitch, eleven times Prime Minister of Jugoslavia, who has been in retirement in Dalmatia. Dr. Nintchitch, I was told, might be counted upon to deal tactfully with the Croatian minority; but the return of Pashitch would signalize the reemergence of the ideal of 'Greater Serbia' as the harsh mistress of her subject peoples.
"Returning to my 'first class hotel' I found the burly clerk, clad in a soup-stained sleazy coat, uproarious over a newspaper. Pointing with an inky finger nail he translated for me the latest insulting name coined by the Serbs for hirsute Croat Raditch: 'the political ape-clown.'
"Since the afternoon loomed with few urban attractions, the most promising pastime seemed to be to wander among the people—still 'peasant clad' in bright garments, rosy cheeked and good humored despite the $1,000,000 a year that King Alexander reaps from them as his personal income in addition to the usual taxes."