flow into the Wichita Beacon office, and I began to appreciate just
how the king felt. So I cleared my throat and said: 'Well Medill,
don't you think we'd better excuse ourselves to his majesty and
go?' The king put up his hand mildly and said: 'O please!' and the
colonel in charge of the party gulped at my sympathy for the king;
but I was not to be balked, and we all rose and after shaking
hands around, the colonel led us out. And I didn't know that I had
committed social manslaughter until the colonel exclaimed when we
were in the corridor: 'Oh you republicans--you republicans, how you
do like to show royalty its place!'" Medill has another version.
He declares that Henry stood the king's obvious ennui as long as he
could, then he rose and cried: "O King! live for ever, but Medill
and I must pull our freight!" This version probably is apochryphal!
The Italian colonel declares that Henry expostulated: "Well, how
in the dickens was I to know that a king always gives the high sign
for company to leave!"

This Italian king is a vital institution. He could be elected
president. For he is a mixer, in spite of his diffident ways. When
the army in Northern Italy was hammering away at the Austrians, the
king was with the soldiers. One gets the impression that he is with
the people pretty generally in their struggle with the privileged
classes. For he has lived peaceably with a socialist cabinet for
some time. He is wise enough to realize that if the aristocracy is
crumbling, the institution of royalty will crumble with aristocracy
if royalty makes an ally of the nobility. So the king and the
Socialists get along splendidly. Now the Socialists in Italy are
of several kinds. There are the city Socialists, who are chiefly
interested in industrial conditions--wages, old age pensions,
employment insurance, and the like; a group much like the Progressive