Last Laugh

Rumanians do not yet know the half of Her Majesty Queen Marie's exuberant doings (TIME, Oct. 25, 1926, et seq.) and endorsings in the U. S. Rumanian censorship obliterates lese-majestee. Last week a mite of the spicy truth leaked out at Bucharest. Wrote intrepid Publicist Grigore Filipescu:

"All America was laughing at us because Queen Marie during her visit to the United States forgot to mention that she never paid her motoring bill. In America the Queen's photographs were used to boost toilet creams and perfumes. Even her private diary was taken from a drawer in a dressing table by an American dancing girl and published."

The sensation at Bucharest, last week, brought rash Publicist Filipescu to a filthy cell in the common jail. Awaiting trial for lese-majeste he stoutly said: "I will not withdraw one word!" His defense, he added, would be that his article is not ''an attack on the Royal Family," as the Crown Prosecutor charges, but instead is a patriotic rebuke to the Rumanian statesman who allowed Her Majesty to go abroad and gallivant.

So far as public opinion could be gauged in Bucharest, last week, most Rumanians sympathized with Dowager Queen Marie, were indignant at the insinuation that U. S. citizens ever laughed at her, or are enjoying a last laugh.