AFGHAN KING

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 May 1928, Page 7

AFGHAN KING

VISIT TO RUSSIA. (Australian Press Association.) (By Cable—Press Assn—Copyright.) MOSCOW, May 9. At a strictly private show, the Red Army is doing it utmost with flame throwers, low flying aeroplanes, tanks, and machine guns, to make a final and grandoise impression on King Amanullah before he starts for Leningrad. There the King of Afghanistan will be shown the grim island fortress of Kronstadt and the Baltic Fleet, amid smoke screens, in a sham fight with torpedo craft. The queerest mixture of presents has been lavished on the Afghan Royalties. Queen Souriya has accepted a gigantic table service of the Tsar Nicholas’s china, and also a rifle, which possibly is a memento of Moscow’s Work-girl Battalions armed for the coming fight with Western Europe, and also a lacquered box of sixty dolls, dressed to represent everyone of the Soviet’s motley races. Overnight, the Grand Hotel, Moscow’s dreary and dusty second-rate Soviet Caravanserai, was transformed into an Afghan’s conception of Mahomet’s Paradise.

Secrecy surrounds a party which King Amanullah and Queen Souriya gave to M. Chicherin, M. Karakhan, and other high officials and the Commissariats of foreign Affairs and Trade. The Master of Ceremonies has given the “Daily News” details which will make the local proletariat’s eyes drop out. The food alone cost 600 guineas, and it. took seventy guests .six hours to eat it. It was the maddest mixture of Russian, Afghan and Persian dishes. The flowers and wines were specially imported.