Prosperous Iceland is just about to celebrate the 1,000th anniversary of the founding of her Althing ("The Oldest Parliament in the World"). She has weathered a fiscal crisis which seemed to threaten her banking structure, emerged sound (TIME, Feb. 17). After painful conning and concentration, King Christian X of Denmark, who is also King of Iceland, has learned enough Icelandic to read his Millennial Day speech in that tongue. Everything seemed ready, last week, for a perfect celebration which thousands of U. S. tourists will attend. Suddenly a terrific squabble and commotion was raised by Dr. Helgi Tomasson, Director of Iceland's only Lunatic Asylum.
Backed by a group of prominent Icelandic physicians, Dr. Tomasson issued a public statement that the "Mussolini of Iceland," famed Herra Jónas Jónsson, boss politician, Minister of Justice and Ecclesiastics, is a lunatic, suggested that if his skill and that of his associates is not sufficient to diagnose Herra Jónsson as mad, then by all means let the world's foremost psychiatric authorities be summoned to Reykjavik.
In point of fact Herra Jónsson is sufficiently eccentric, in a masterful driving sort of way, to have excited the same sort of hushed questions which are asked about Signor Benito Mussolini. To be great and to be mad are merely two different ways of being unusual.
Lunatic or no lunatic, the "Mussolini of Iceland" acted last week like a statesman, dismissed Dr. Tomasson from his post as Director of the Icelandic Lunatic Asylum, brought pressure on the Icelandic press to drop discussion of the whole matter, pushed resolutely on with plans for the Millennial Celebration.