The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel 4. THE ROYAL NONESUCH TAKES A WIFE ALBANIA is the land of unconditional hospitality. Literally I was never allowed to pay for a meal in a public restaurant when I was by myself. It is an intolerable disgrace to these proud men to let a woman pay for her own food. Once I stopped my car and, looking carefully round to make sure, as I thought, that only the simplest countrymen were present, ordered a solid meal, costing about eighteen cents. Just as I war counting out my change, crowing to myself that I had success fully circumvented this unwritten law, up sprang an attractive young mar who bowed and said in French: "I am the government official in charge of bookkeeping. I, of course, have the honor to pay for you lunch." I took a house, an old rambling Turkish vizier's home, in Scutari on the banks of the majestic lake, and there I settled down to produce my guidebook. Came and went the marriage of King Zog and his little Hungarian bride, the Countess Geraldine Apponyi. I photographed it for the London Illustrated. Whenever a writer of musical comedy wants to prepare his audience for something utterly improbable and absurd, he sets his scene in "a kingdom in the Balkans." But no extravaganza could surpass the improbability, the absurdity of this real wedding. It exhibited every stock character, every stock comic situation, besides special phantasia of its own. Behold the little Cinderella bride, chosen from a row of photo graphs of aristocratic girls of neighboring countries with whose families it would be possible and politic for an insecure self-mad king to become allied. A brave girl comes to a land she does not car to understand. She falls sincerely in love with her intended and refers to him with awe as "His Majesty." Behold the groom, once a wild feudal chieftain of the mountain fastnesses, with great natural aptitude. For a while, under the quiding hand of a strong-willed mother, he was a conscientious monarch who tried with some success to serve his people. Now he is spoiled by luxury, though still handsome enough across the footlights. He covers his bride with huge diamonds and Paris gowns paid for E the taxes wrung from his million half-starved subjects and fro] foreign governments by all sorts of chicanery. Such a coward he has become-assuming he was ever anything else-so afraid of a shot the he cannot endure the flash of a photographer's bulb but has to have special lighting arranged months before the event. So cowardly is } that not once does he appear at a window to greet his subjects during the ten days' commanded rejoicing. The groom's proverbial three sisters would be rather good-looking if they had the courage just to be natural. Once they were barefooted girls, busy in their snow-topped mountains making goat's cheese. They might have married handsome mountaineers of their race. Then they would have had love, homes, and children. Now, alas, they are princesses, and weird and wonderful is their idea of how princesses of the Great World dress and comport themselves. Behold, too, the entourage that soon descends upon the little Cinderella, now that she is to become a queen. There is the fat, good-natured nobleman, her uncle, the perfect stock character, who loves to pinch the girls behind the door and gets hauled out and scolded by his stern wife. There is the little chambermaid, once a Viennese guttersnipe, who profits handsomely by making herself the lonely little bride's only confidant. Now she gives herself airs and is false to the bone-what German musical comedy calls a "Kammerkatze." Best of the characters in this farce, hilarious yet ominous, is the "best man," an emissary of one of the only two governments, Italy and Germany, which officially recognize the affair.-Naturally, this personage represents the one to which the groom has been busily selling his country down the river. It is Italy, which has a complete strangle hold on the little land and is squeezing the breath out of it. King Zog's "best friend" and "best man" is that international clown, Count Ciano. He is sent by Mussolini to present as a wedding gift the lovely yacht which, in less than a year, he will snatch back. He will also try his best to catch and kill the "dear friend" who for his part is even at that moment trying to sell him out to another power. To see the arrival by air of Count Ciano was one of those once-in-alifetime things. The guards alone were unforgettable. Zog had been interned in Vienna during the last war and had admiringly noted all the fancy fixings of the various gaudy Austrian uniforms. He meant to put on the perfect show. So his guards were decorated with all the elaborate trappings of all the Austrian regiments. Such a plethora of feathers, stripes, buttons, epaulettes, cords, swords, boots, spurs, and gold embroidery was never seen on earth. Ciano, rosy, hearty, and well jowled, was rushed from the airfield to a largish house called a palace, where he burst, exactly like a clown jumping through a hoop, out upon the indispensable balcony. The great gates below opened wide-and there stood The Bodyguard! We were stunned, speechless with admiration. All the Italian nationals in the country had been carefully grouped below to cheer, as it was more than an Albanian's life was worth to do such a thing for a loathed Italian. One Albanian, carried away by the excitement, clapped his hands. He was severely beaten up afterward by his fellow countrymen. Ciano, of course, was serenely unaware of all this-or was he? Such fat self-satisfaction, such warm benignity, such love for the "dear" Albanians! Who that saw it could ever forget the expression on the face of the little free-lance English writer (he was supposed to be doing a "life" of King Zog and therefore had to be handled with care) as he gazed into his plate at a royal reception: "I, even I, am eating off gold plate, by Jove," he murmured ecstatically to himself. But really magnificent were the bride's horde of Hungarian relatives who descended upon the poor little country like a pack of hungry wolves. Their clothes, especially those of the men, were ancient family heirlooms, blazing from head to foot with jewels, velvet, and gold. They were really the finest things I ever saw in Europe for richness. The old noblemen, upright, proud, and firm, were straight out of a book of fairy tales. But the effect of the young men was spoiled by their uncertain, baffled look of discontent-and hopelessness. Hungary ever since the last war had been trying to build a constructive national policy on a purely negative principle- "Nem nem, soha [No, no, never]"-a hopeless, an impossible task. Hungary was in a very bad way. No one thought of the unfortunate Albanian peasants. It was they who had to pay the price of this disgusting extravagance. The royal tables groaned under rich meats and fine wines, and the poor, humble people groaned under whipped-up taxes. Like a swarm of locusts, the relatives came, ate, and departed. And immediately all amelioration work, all government social services, old-age pittances, fruit-tree planting, stopped: the king of a population, say, one seventh of the population of New York City, had brought home his bride. Previous Chapter | Content | Next Chapter The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel