BANQUET RUINED

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 August 1930, Page 12

BANQUET RUINED

ATTEMPT TO KISS QUEEN 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—To-day 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 halfway 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 caviare from the Caspian, the smoked salmon of the Baltic, and the wines and champagne of the Caucasus.” ... The trouble came when 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. “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 f<— the thiee 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 to-day as he saw it durimr 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. .. 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 their’s is one of the most austere, 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 whippers-in, the taskmasters, the slave drivers, if you will, of the most ignorant mass of peasantry in the world. A hundred and twenty million peasants almost bestial in their 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?’