Chula, however, kept to himself that his stay in Bangkok ‘was, in part, spoiled by an undercurrent of political anxiety and unrest’. This led him to warn the King that he thought revolution of some kind was imminent, also going as far as to suggest that, as the following year, 1932, would be the celebration of 150 years of the Chakri Dynasty, it would be an ideal occasion to announce the creation of a constitutional instead of an Absolute Monarchy. In this he showed great perspicacity for, when staying with his mother in Paris, on the evening of 24th June 1932, on return from the cinema accompanied by Shura Rahm and Sophia – one of Katya’s friends – they found a note by the telephone that ‘Mr. Pila had rung from the Siamese Legation but left no message. ‘According to Katya’s diary, ‘Chula became very worried as he said when Mr. Pila calls so late, it’s always bad news and he’s sure someone died in Bangkok. I tried my best to calm him, but I felt worried too as he’s right, Mr. Pila never calls me so late for nothing’.
Morning brought confirmation of their presentiment, for when the maid brought Katya’s morning tea and the newspapers, she announced ‘that a very bad news are in the papers that revolution broke out in Siam’.
‘My heart nearly stopped’, Katya continues, ‘but I waited till ten then I went to waken Chula and tell him this awful news. I drew the curtains and spoke to him quite calmly, telling him he mustn’t worry as it may turn out very good yet, as I trust no Siamese would harm anyone of the royal family.’
All that morning friends telephoned Katya incessantly, either to find out if she knew more than they had learned from the newspapers or to express sympathy for the concern they were sure she must be feeling. ‘It was such a relief to hear so many friendly attentions’, as Katya puts it. The following day passed in the same atmosphere of apprehension as no-one at the Legation had heard any more except that ‘King Prajadhipok did not yet give no answer to the demand for a constitution, but had asked time to read and study it’. In the afternoon Chula and Shura went to the Legation to see if anything more had been heard, while Katya, left alone in her flat, ‘during everybody’s absence’ busied herself ‘making chocolate fudges’.
At dinner when only Sophia was present, ‘Chula was very excited and, explained to them the reasons why the revolution had happened. Talked very well all the time in French. Looking at him, I was thinking what a wonderful leader he would be’, she writes, clearly considering with maternal pride the possibility that, despite the disadvantage of having a Russian mother, her son might yet be called upon to play a part in Siam. ‘On the other hand’, she adds, ‘I don’t care of position, money and all these things; all I want is to see my child safe and happy… I let him talk’, she concludes, ‘as I knew it would be good for him.’
Later that same evening the Legation telephoned that a telegram had just come in and directly it was decoded they would ring back. When they did so it was to say that ‘the official news was that a constitutional monarchy had been established and that everything in Bangkok was quiet’. Here, unfortunately, this fragment of a diary only kept from 5th to 27th June 1932 and never resumed, ends abruptly.
The situation in Bangkok that precipitated the Revolution was as follows. On ascending the throne seven years previously in 1926, Prajadhipok, who took the title of Rama VII, modestly felt that his purely soldierly career had ill-fitted him for the role of absolute monarch. He had created a Supreme Council, mostly composed of his princely brothers and relatives, to advise him in reducing the heavy debt incurred in the Privy Purse by the personal extravagance of Vajiravudh, a proportion of which had fallen to the charge of the National Exchequer. These difficulties, compounded by the world economic depression of 1929, made stringent retrenchment necessary and one economy which caused great discontent was the sweeping reduction in official salaries, particularly among officers of the armed forces.
Another factor playing a part in a potentially explosive situation was the resentment of educated commoners, numbers of whom had held high office during the two previous reigns, at their virtual exclusion from Government, a state of mind which led them to begin questioning whether autocratic rule in the modern world was not beginning to be an anachronism.
King Rama VII in the ceremony at which Siam received a constitution.
Although Prajadhipok himself was aware of the dangerous state of affairs (which Chula had also foreseen), and had actually considered granting a constitution of his own accord, Sir Josiah Crosby, Great Britain’s Minister at Bangkok from 1934 to 1941 writes in Siam at the Crossroads that he ‘had it from the King’s own lips that he was dissuaded from such a wise course by his uncles and brothers who were unable to believe that anything untoward was in the air’.
It was certainly ironic that the Supreme Council appointed by Prajadhipok himself, to help and advise him, should so signally have failed him at this crisis. Even the action of the Chief of Police, who had discovered the plot the night before the rising and had hastened to call on one of the princes of the Supreme Council for permission to arrest the ringleaders, was of no avail, for the prince in question blandly stated that he had heard such rumours before, that all had proved false, and he refused to sanction any measures whatsoever being taken.
In the event, therefore, the conspirators, consisting of young intellectuals and army and navy officers, found themselves staging a coup d’etat which met with almost no resistance and the first the capital knew of it was the ominous rumble of tanks moving in to the grounds of Prince Boripatra’s palace at dawn. The Prince – President of the Supreme Council – was seized and conveyed, still in pyjamas, to Dusit Palace where he was joined by several more princes and a minister or two, all rounded up as hostages. Prince Svasti escaped, having dashingly commandeered a detached railway engine and escaped in it to Hua Hin. There he found the King on holiday in his new Palace ‘Klai Kangwol’ whose name ‘Far from Care’, proved to be something of a misnomer.
The ultimatum, delivered next day by warship, informed the monarch of the formation of a Peoples’ Party, whose ‘principal aim’ – according to the Bangkok Times – was ‘the creation of a constitutional monarchy’, and warned that, ‘if members of the Peoples’ Party receive any injuries, the princes held in pawn will suffer in consequence’. ‘But’, the document continued, ‘we enjoin Your Majesty to return to the capital to reign again as King under the constitutional monarchy as established by the Peoples’ Party’. The King accepted, returned to Bangkok, and negotiations were begun. The princes were released though compelled to quit the posts they had held. Phraya Mana, Chief of the Supreme Court, was elected Prime Minister. A permanent constitution was duly signed on 10th December 1932, and a new era began.
XIV
Motor-racing
Princess Chavalit and Prince Amorn Kitiyakara.
As not infrequently happens, dramatic coincidence can play a part in real life which would be dismissed were it written in a book or play as being unlikely or far-fetched. That same year, Katya heard to her astonishment that Chavalit, whom she had never expected to cross her path again, was actually in Paris. Married to Prince Amorn and the mother of five sons, the erstwhile pretty and lively charmer, still young, but now ravaged by illness, had been brought, as a last resort by her wealthy husband to Europe, in a despairing search for a cure.