GERMANY: Tea, Gold

Two monarchs honored President von Hindenburg of the Reich last week.

One was tall, slim, blond, virile, wise. He was Gustav V, King of Sweden. When he called incognito, silk-hatted, frock-coated, at the Wilhelmstrasse Palace, Berlin, an entire company of the Reichswehr goosestepped to welcome the first monarch ever to visit a President of the Reich. Pleased, Paul von Beneckendorf und Hindenburg graciously entertained King Gustav at tea.

The Herr President was likewise gladdened to receive from Oriental couriers a picture framed in solid gold encrusted with exquisite ivory mosaic work. Upon the canvas shone the portrait of a sovereign whose dark handsome features and calm imperious brow do not betray the daredevil brain within. A field marshal's uniform and the crown jewels of Persia served further to disguise this likeness of the Shahinshah Riza Shah Pahlavi, "the King of Kings," a onetime Russo-Persian adventurer, who recently overthrew the Kajar dynasty (TIME, Nov. 9, PERSIA) and has established himself on the throne of Persia with a civil list equivalent to $600,000 a year.