PERU: Ya Ha Firmado

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"Senores Representantes," he cried dramatically, "upon resigning irrevocably the supreme command of the republic, I state that I served my country with all the energies of my heart and all the lights of my brain."

General Manuel Maria Ponce, a Leguia friend, was placed in command of the revolutionary Junta (military government). Ex-President Leguia and his son Juan fled to the cruiser Almirante Grau, begged to be taken to a neutral port. Other members of the numerous Leguia family scurried to the safety of Lima's foreign embassies.

When the Almirante Grau was a few miles at sea a wireless message was received that the revolution had failed, Leguia was once more President. Promptly the cruiser broke out the President's flag, fired a 21-gun salute. Officers came to salute again their Commander in Chief. Little Leguia was in no condition to receive them. The bitterness of defeat had affected his kidneys, driven him to bed with an acute attack of uremic poisoning.

Then came another message. General Ponce was deposed as leader of the Junta. New ruler of Peru was the revolution's starter, vigorous Colonel Sanchez Cerro. Further the Junta warned the Almirante Grau that if the cruiser did not immediately put about, return Augusto Leguia to Peru to await proper punishment, the cruiser would be considered an enemy vessel, its crew subject to court martial.

The litmus was red indeed. The Almirante Gran's officers stopped saluting and arrested little Leguia. Back in Callao harbor, a U. S. physician, Dr. McCormack, visited the sick man three times, announced that contrary to current rumor the patient was "neither dead nor dying." The Junta's President Sanchez Cerro thundered that "Tyrant" Leguia "must be made to account for his acts," ordered Augusto Leguia and son Juan imprisoned in the island fortress of San Lorenzo, bastille of Peru's political prisoners. Peruvians thrilled at a typically Latin touch: jailer-to-be of ex-President Leguia, commander of the guard placed over him, was a Lieutenant Alfonso Llosa just released from the same prison by the revolution after serving one year of an indefinite sentence imposed by Leguia.