DENMARK: Aage v. Trotsky

Excessively tall, sardonic and adventurous is the King of Denmark’s cousin, Prince Aage, socially famed for his discovery that “Paris nightclub champagne tastes exactly like licking a dusty window pane.” Last spring Aage, weary of Paris, was permitted by the French Government to re-enlist in their blood-&-sandy Foreign Legion, regaining his former rank of captain (TIME, June 27). Last week Danish newspapers excitedly printed a letter from the royal Legionnaire. For once in his life world-weary Aage was aroused, indignant.

“I could not at first believe reports that Trotsky was going to lecture in Denmark,” wrote Aage, “but I now see it is true. . . . Has Denmark forgotten that Trotsky was a member of the [Soviet] Government that killed the two sons and the grandchildren of the Danish Princess who be came Empress [Maria Feodorovna of Russia]?

“Now I can understand Shakespeare’s writing in Hamlet ‘There is something rotten in the state of Denmark!’ … I want to express sorrow and anger at this event.”*

Quite possibly Prince Aage spoke for King Christian X, who of course could not openly express the Danish Royal Family’s hate & fear of Leon Trotsky. Not merely a practitioner of revolution, the Russian is also its greatest living theorist. As the author of “the theory of permanent revolution,” Comrade Trotsky holds that the lower classes are at all times revolting against the upper classes. Naturally Danish Deputies of the Right and Centre took Prince Aage’s letter as their cue to heap torrents of abuse on Denmark’s bearded Socialist Premier Thorvald Stauning. Premier Stauning retorted:

“We ought, I say we ought to allow foreigners to visit our country. We cannot discriminate according to the wishes of different classes.”

The Stauning Government was indiscriminate to the extent of detailing 600 policemen to guard the Great Revolutionist. In Moscow the Soviet Government knows all about “the theory of permanent revolution” and highly disapproves of it. Dictator Josef Stalin and his ruling class hate & fear Leon Trotsky even more than do kings & queens. Last week pro-Stalin Communists daubed Copenhagen streets with this strange device: Down with Premier Stauning and Traitor Trotsky! Long Live Soviet Russia!

So afraid of assassination was Comrade Trotsky (né Bronstein) that he left his train “white-faced” (according to Hearst-men) before it reached Copenhagen and sped by motor car to an unrevealed hiding place in the Capital.

Four days later Comrade Trotsky popped out of hiding long enough to accept $1,000 for a thick, halting and at times unintelligible radio address in English to U. S. citizens, and $5,000 for a similar talk to U. S. sound newsreel cameras. Visibly nervous, Speaker Trotsky was then escorted by police to Copenhagen’s Sports Palace where he spoke to 2,500 Danes in German, darting glances about the hall, twitching his hands and seemingly afraid that someone might throw a bomb at any moment.

Trotskyisms of the week: “I am politically a Communist. One gets older, but seldom better as time goes on. . . .

“What was achieved at the high cost of the [Russian] revolution? Many critics take malicious joy over the fact that the land of the Soviet bears but little semblance to a realm of general wellbeing. … In the course of the Civil War in the United States 50,000 men were killed. Can’t those sacrifices be justified from the standpoint of the American people, from the standpoint of the political forces of America, of the Negro? Absolutely! . . .

“We have created a new Russian people. All that was good in the old Russia we have kept. Capitalism has outlived itself. It could not become better, but only worse for the workers. A new way of solving the problem of humanity had to be found. The Soviet shows the way!”

Copenhagen reporters claimed to have discovered that two of Comrade Trotsky’s armed “secretaries” who guard him night & day are in fact agents of Dictator Josef Stalin’s secret police or gay-pay-oo. Since Stalin expelled Trotsky from Russia and the two men are bitter enemies, no arrangement could be more paradoxical. But Stalin may prefer that Trotsky should not be assassinated and thus become a martyr to “Trotskyism.” Last week Comrade Trotsky refrained from attacking or even mentioning Dictator Stalin.

*In the current Liberty (Dec. 3), Prince Aage writes: ‘”Can legionnaires be reformed? Can better results be achieved by substituting mildness for court-martial and military jails? No, no, and no! “As they say in Morocco: ‘the legionnaires will fight like tigers. The legionnaires will die like the early Christians. But at the same time the legionnaires will drink and riot like the lowest blackguards known on any continent. And thus it shall be till hell freezes over.’ “