A BANQUET RUINED

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1059, 25 August 1930, Page 13

A BANQUET RUINED

ATTEMPT TO KISS QUEEN AMANULLAH’S IRE Why Amanullah, at that time King of Afghanistan, left Russia three days before he was expected to do so, after his European tour, is explained by Mr. Negley Farson, an American, in a book called “Seeing Red—Today in Russia.” Amanullah, it is explained, went off suddenly because someone tried to kiss Queen Souriya. The incident happened in Tiflis, the capital of Georgia, just south of the Caucasus' Mountains, and half-way between the Black Sea and the Caspian. Here Amanullah and his Queen were entertained at a banquet in the little place which once belonged to the Grand Duke Nicholas. "And here In Royal style,” says Mr. Farson, “the Russians entertained him, plying him with cavaire from the Caspian, the smoked salmon of the Baltic, and the wines and champagne of the Caucasus.” The trouble came wheh a “distinguished Georgian official” stood up and made the most rousing speech of the evening. "He was overcome by it and the wine.” said Mr. Farson, “and with a brimming glass in his hand he walked unsteadily along the table to the King of Afghanistan. ‘I salute you,’ he said, and, draining his glass, he leaned down, with a warm-hearted manner of his native mountains, to kiss the King in friendship. “Amanullah pushed him away. “The Georgian did not seem to notice. He bowed to the Queen, and then it was seen that his intention -was to kiss Souriya also. “Queer Tales” “Amanullah stood up. He made a sign. And then, as the appalled Georgians stared, Amanullah and his suite left the banquet room. He left Tiflis at once without waiting for the three days of feting that had been planned for him. “The news flashed to Moscow. Moscow demanded that the official should explain himself. But this the smiling man of the photograph (a photograph on exhibition at a shop in Tiflis) could not do. as he had put a bullet through his head.” Of Amanullah's visit to London, Mr. Farson says:— “In England he slept in Buckingham Palace, and queer tales were told there of the domestic habits of his suite.” Mr. Farson describes life in Russia today as he saw it during a year’s visit, travelling all over the country, talking with peasants in their huts, and visiting all kinds of out-of-the-way places. Without Bias He seems to write without bias and without any desire to grind a Soviet or anti-Soviet axe. “The Communists say there is no God,” he observes; “they laugh at priests and priesthoods, and yet theirs is one of the most aus.tere, indefatigable and unself-seeking brotherhoods in the world. If it is not a religion—which term they despise—it is a cult. . . . "They are the whipperß-in, the task-

masters, the slave drivers, if you will, of the most ignorant mass of peasantry in the world. A hundred and twenty millions peasants almost bestial in tlieir stupidity. . . . “I was surprised to find that only one out of about every hundred Russians was a Communist. I was surprised to find them a brotherhood amazingly similar to the Jesuits.”