Books: Caesars into Dust

TURBULENT YEARS—Isaac F. Marcosson—Dodd, Mead ($3.50).

While they are in power, Europe’s dictators, premiers and tycoons seem to be sitting solidly on their thrones, or behind them. Just how rapidly they can lose their strength, how fast and far they can fall, and how quickly they can be forgotten, is demonstrated in Isaac Marcosson’s reminiscences of Europe’s heroes of 15 years ago. The work of a veteran Sateve-post contributor, Turbulent Years’ 18 chapters include sketches of Trotsky, Sun Yatsen, Calles, an essay on dictators in general, as Marcosson saw them. Some samples:

> In four years Hugo Stinnes made $100,000,000, employed 700,000 workmen, sat on 60 boards of directors, had an interest in 1,533 companies, became Europe’s biggest financier by 1921. He died in 1924. A year later his sons were bankrupt, his empire scattered, his family embittered.

> Bold, quiet Ivar Kreuger seemed to be so powerful, with his 24 match monopolies, his loans to governments totaling $400,000,000, that when he crudely forged $100,000,000 worth of Italian bonds, nobody examined them. When he committed suicide the Swedish Parliament assembled, the Bank for International Settlements met, the head of the Esthonian match monopoly killed himself, Author Marcosson, whose laudatory interview was appearing in the Satevepost, was thunderstruck.

> Bluff, rotund Primo de Rivera seemed solidly in power in Spain from 1923 to 1930. He scrapped the constitution, ruled by decree, sent his opponents to exile, clamped down on free speech and press. When Marcosson saw Primo after Alfonso’s abdication, he had no uniform, smartness, or confidence, said good-by shakily, raced to Paris where he died forgotten in a Left Bank hotel.