Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1937-08-05
OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES
| WHO'S NEWS
THIS WEEK..
BY lsmuel r. Pa rton

Fun-Loving Emir.

| M GW 4ORAs - As inc entrance
! to the main reception chamber
Of the palace Of Emir AbduIIah Of
Trans-Jordania is q Coney Island
mirror. A visitor, salaaming to
royalty, perhaps with constraint and
self-consiousness, sees his person
wildly and ridiculously distorted.
The Emir smiles and puts his guest
at ease.
He explains that this is merely
his way of breaking stilted routine
and getting on a basis of friendly
understanding. Rollicking old Co
mez, late dictator of Venezuela, used
to play jokes on important visitors,
but he was just mischievous, while
the Emir is philosophical.
Ruler of the nearest pure Arab
state to Palestine, the Emir APP
proves Britain's tri-partite division,
with the Arab section added to his
Trans-J 0rdania. From his palace
window, he looks out across the des-
ert to the mountains of Moab, where
Moses surveyed the Promised Land.
It's long view back into the, CEN
turtles, and it seems to induce in
the Emir both disillusiOnment and
patience.
His attitude is important, in the
political backwash of the British
cabinets sudden decision, and it
seems quite probable that they
sounded him out before announcing
it.
Since the death of his brothers,
Feisal and Ali, he has been a uni
tying power in the three Arab states
of Trans-Jordania, Hejaz and Iraq,
comprising many millions of Arabs.
He also is a powerful leader of the
Pan-Islamic movement, started by
old Sultan Abdul Hamid, II, fifty
two years ago.
He is the AbduIlah Of Lawrence's
"Rev0lt in the Desert" campaign
ing brilliantly against the Turks,
and then finding Winston Churchill
and Sir Herbert Samuel long ON
promises and short ON fulfiIIment-
historic recreance which caused
Lawrence bitterly to reject royal
favor and hide himself away as
"Aircraftsman Shaw"
The Emir, too, was embittered,
but he is a realist. He knows the
power of England and scrupulously
maintains the synthetic postwar
status quo. England, of course, has
a tremendous political stake in Is
lam as buffer to India, but there
are even more tangible factors
which the Emir weighs and APP
praises and cannily uses. Those
three Arab states have cotton, rub
Der, tobacco, mineral and oil lands
and developments which have sup
piled the Enir with an ace card in
dealing with European nations.
He has been deliberately hostile
and resistant to Mussolini and
Italy's radio blast across 1000 miles
of desert. 81 wish I could be the
first Arab to enlist to defend Ethio-
pia," he said when II Duce started
his African adventure.
England pulls the strings for all
three Arab states and none has
complete autonomy. The Emir is
reconciled. He says wise men COM
promise until they can command.
He is of medium stature, with a
neat goatee, restless, searching
black eyes and strong white teeth
- a man of culture and charm.
He wears a gold-embroidered silk
robe, with a gold-sheathed dagger
hung from his waist. Sometimes he
wears the ''kuffich" or white veil
and sometimes the traditional
sheik's head dress. Next to the pic
ture Of his father, the hard-fight-
ing old King Hussein, hangs a pic
ture Of particularly ferocious ben
gal tiger.
II like to keep them together" he
says. "They look so much alike"
Victorian Idol.
A T THE turn Of the century, Mrs.
"A Patrick Campbell was described
by interviewers as ''haughty and
world-weary." At seventy-tw0, still
playing, she is disclosed as genial,
humorous and friendly. Lyric leg
ends Of the theater crowd in as she
rehearses for a revival of "T h 9
Thirteenth Chair" at Milford, Conn.
The Victorian idol of two
continents, sharing Olympus with
Duse and Bernhardt, she has been
on the stage for more than fifty
years. She was Beatrice Stella Tan
ner, the daughter of London mer-
chant. She played Shaw, Pinero,
Barrie, Wilde, Ibsen and Maeter-
linck and some of these dramatists
wrote plays for her. Broadway re-
members her best as Eliza in
Shaw's "Pygmalion."
Her first husband, Major George
CORVALLIS West, died in the Boer
war and her SON, Allan, in the
World war. She was in the films
from 1884 to 1886, departing with
the remark that no longer would she
be q "jackanapes in Hollywood"
Censor Of Burlesque.
Sam A. Scribner, New York's new
seventy-eight-year-old censor of bur-
lACrssn nw~A ~4tAoIl~~