Royalty can have a rough life in these times—when it loses touch with its people. Quite a list could be made of monarchs who have lost their rule just within the memory of this generation.

Barely over a year ago King Farouk was run out of his country, Egypt, by coming out second best in a test of power and leadership with General Naguib. [Mohammed Naguib]

Now the shah of Iran has been put to flight in a similar case, leaving Premier Mossadegh the undoubted dictator of that troubled nation.

There’s getting to be a pattern of abdication, not only of the prerogatives of royalty but of its responsibilities, which is followed by the establishment of an “iron man” dictator of the people. Inequity, it seems, breeds unrest; and the people, desiring freedom and equality, fall for the promises of a “liberator” who then brings them new inequities. Democracy is the people’s goal, but it is far off.

This is something for the Iranians to work out for themselves. But the location of their country, and its oil reserves, draw outside interest from those who otherwise are not primarily interested in what kind of government Iran may have.

The United States would like to see Iran a free, democratic nation. It would like to see Iranian oil flowing freely for the free world. But the United States does not wish to see Iran, or its oil, absorbed by Communist Russia, on whose perimeter it lies.

Faced by the de facto situation of Mossadegh’s totalitarianism, there is not much that the United States—or Britain—can do about changing it, at the moment. Russia seems to be having no more success, and that’s a comfort.

But Premier Mosadegh doesn’t have to look far over his own borders to see a warning for himself and his ways. The reported assassination of Syria’s “strong man” President Adib Shishekly should show him that what can happen to a dictator who loses touch with his people is no less drastic and even more fatal than what is and has been happening to royalty that gets out of tune.

In the end, perhaps, the people will get what they want—which is neither an unseeing monarch nor a tyrannical dictator, whether in Iran or Egypt, or even Russia.