"Alexander the Absolute"
(See front cover)
Events strikingly revealed, last week, that Jugoslavia's 12,000,000 citizens are now quietly despotized by one man— their King. The nation was faced with a problem which most people would refer to their Parliament. But the King has abolished Parliament (TIME, Jan. 14). He has suspended the constitution. Therefore it was Alexander who decided of his sole volition, last week, that Jugoslavia should ratify the Kellogg-Briand peace pact renouncing war (TIME, July 30).
Even in the U. S., where the pact was conceived, it was put through only after a hot fight in the Senate. But at Belgrade the pact was ratified in a few seconds, when Jugoslavia's Dictator-King dashed onto a royal decree his sprawling: "ALEXANDER."
Alert observers who remember all the way back to Jan. 6, 1929, when the King seized his new dictatorial powers, slyly recalled last week that "Alexander the Absolute" was not long since known as "the king who looks like a dentist."
Dentist into Dictator. There was a time when Signor Benito Mussolini looked like a dentist or a dental student. That was before he shaved off his black, toothbrush mustache. Similarly King Alexander used to be of an insignificant appearance. Though his mind and features were slowly maturing, hardening, this change was obscured by the fact that when one beheld the King, one's attention was monopolized by the little tufts of black. Not until the "dentist" put away his "tooth-brush"—not until the historic week when His Majesty w ent to Paris and there shaved off his mustache (TIME, Nov. 26)—did 12,000,000 Jugoslavs begin to recognize that his matured and resolute countenance is that of a dictator (see front cover).
Unquestionably the trip to Paris, where King Alexander conferred secretly with that stern greybeard Prime Minister Raymond Poincare, marked the turning-point in the royal career. Jugoslavia is the "little ally" of France, and the statesmen at Paris have been repeatedly vexed by the notorious instability of the Parliament in Belgrade—an instability which became anarchy last summer when the leader of the opposition, Stefan Raditch, was assassinated on the floor of the House (TiME, July 2). Apparently M. Poincaré recommended the kill-or-cure panacea known as a military dictatorship. King Alexander, assured of French backing, went home and sprang his coup royal, with the aid of Jugoslavia's secret military organization, "The White Hand," and its somewhat sinister leader, General Petar Zivkovitch.
Commenting on the situation to a French correspondent, after the coup, His Majesty observed significantly:
"God be thanked, the army in this country is loyal, and in no way engaged in politics. . . . I want my country to benefit later by more just electoral laws, by true parliamentarianism and real democracy. . . . But before this can be attained there must be a period of hard work. . . . We must clean up and reorganize the government, which may take a long time, but I thoroughly believe in our ultimate success. . . If I fail it will be I, and I personally, who am to blame, but with my people behind me I shall not fail!"