This is where all the old-fashioned theatre curtains were born. Here you have in a single vista, from almost anywhere in Monaco, conventional compositions of rugged mountains, gorgeous flowers, pines, and palms, marble terraces and fountains, cream coloured villas with majolica roofs and fresh coed eaves, a sapphire-turquoise-emerald sea and sparking sunlight, with a picturesque white cloud posing prettily in a baby-blue sky. To bring the picture up to date there are airships skimming about like giant dragonflies and automobile-engined racing boats flash through the water at forty miles an hour, disturbing the dreams of little snowy-sailed pleasure yachts and fishing smacks from Italy with ved and orange sails, A policeman in Monaco wears blue trousers with a brilliant red stripe, a blue coat blazing with red cords and tassels, gilt and silver, braid and brass buttons, and blue pith helmet corded and trimmed with metal. The soldiers in front of the palace have all that and in addition plumes of red, white, and blue cock feathers in their helmets;.to say nothing of their bayoneted guns. A corporal adds a dozen or two medals on his chest, most of them awarded by France for valour in the war. A captain's uniform baffles mere words to describe. Then there is in that army of nearly eighty men a colonel.
I went up to the fortress-castle-palace of the Prince of Monaco to see just how uneasy lies the head that wears his crown (writes an "Observer'' special correspondent). For all its beauty the imposing structure with its ponderous bastions, rampes. turrets, towers, castellated walls, and noble driveways, brings a smile to one's lips. It looks so absurdly an illustration from a Prisoner of Zenda" story. As you stand in front of the palace in the incredibly pretty square between it and the tiny town of Monaco, with its toylike streets and houses, al] as clean as a stage set on opening night, you hear a flourish of trumpets. From out the palace gate marches a detail of bird-of-paradise soldiers. They form, stand at parade with stiffly-held guns, officers at salute with swords. Then through the palace! gates there rolls a Rolls-Royce mousine into the one of the princely family is going forth to shop.
Tae Prince asp Proptem oF
Democracy.
I found Albert Grimaldi, Prince of Monaco, not in the palace, but. standing before his desk in his laboratory at the Oceanographic Museum with a blue denim apron over a well-worn business suit such as would not have attracted notice on the streets of London or New York. He is a quiet, almost diffident elderly gentleman with a short grey beard, mild eyes that might be called grey or brown, the features of a Frenchman of upper middle class and a_ good out-of-doors complexion. He was at his beloved hobby. the science of oceanography. The splendid granite museum he has built and furnished contains perhaps the most complete collection and history of deep-sea life in-the world.
He speaks English idiomatically and without accent, but with a slightly Frenph intonation. His manner alternates between a consciousness of the amusing features of his little kingdom and a deep seriousness when he speaks of its future.
I asked him, as ruler, what was his outstanding political problem.
"Democracy," "he answered slowly. "You see, up to about ten years ago I was absolute monarch, as were all the Grimaldis for centuries back. But the age is increasingly one of democracy, constitutional government, popular legislatures. So I said to my people that we in Monaco ought not' to be behind the times. 'The day of autocracy is past,' I told them. You shall have a constitution, the latest word in democratic charters. You shall make your own laws. You shall govern yourselves. have divided Monaco into twenty-four districts. Let each of them elect a representative and_ these shall be your national legislature.'
"Well, I had to do a great deal of explaining to my people. They it into their heads that I was frying to foist- on them work. which; rightly should be done by me. 'We've got along for centuries without this new-fangled fol-de-rol,' they said to me. 'Why bother us now to change?' 'Because you have to keep up with the times,' I told them. What is the matter with our modernity? they demand ed. Haven't we automatic electric lifts. the most modern transit, square—some- faultless paving, electric lights in the humblest villa, power plants, 19290-model schoolhouses and hos-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.