EVENING SPIDERS
The beautiful match

It is surprising that in our deliberately sporting era, the announcement of this match has not aroused more emotion. Through the voice of the New York Herald, the great Spanish writer Blasco Ibanez has just launched a challenge to His Majesty Alfonso XIII, his sovereign. It is a match to the finish whose kick-off will be given on the first of November, the date on which Mr. Blasco Ibanez will publish in France an anti-monarchist pamphlet printed in two million copies, to be spread throughout Spain by all means "and, if necessary, by air."
Mr. Blasco Ibanez adds: "If the king does not succumb within three or four months to a movement of opinion aroused by my writings, I will devote the rest of my life to pleading, in all the capitals of the world, the cause of liberty."

Isn't this a fine fight in perspective: on one side the king of all Spains, supported by his nobility, his army, his clergy, his Primo de Rivera; on the other, a proscribed novelist, armed only with his pen. It seems to me that, for the spectators most indifferent to political struggles, this event is as interesting as the Dempsey-Paolino encounter or the championship attempts sketched by Epinard on American racetracks.

Bernard GERVAISE