Second Dynasty?

A thwarted grandmother in a cloud of fluttering veils flounced out of Bucharest last week, announced resignedly that she would spend her birthday (54th) at bleak, inclement Balcic located on the Black Sea.

She would receive nobody before she left, least of all Supreme Court Justice Constantin Saratzeanu, though he humbly sought an audience. Grandmother Queen Marie could not forgive Justice Saratzeanu for having been elected by Parliament to a vacancy among the three Regents of Rumania (TIME, Oct. 21), a vacancy which she had dearly coveted. As Her Majesty's special train chuffed off toward Balcic all Rumania gasped at an interview blazoned above her name by the Royalist newspaper Universal: "The royal family does not even know what it means to strive for honors and privileges. We do not need such distinctions. We are where we are to do our duty. That is all." Followed a charge that Peasant Prime Minister Juliu Maniu had offered to wangle the election of Her Majesty to one of the Regency posts on condition that she obtained the resignation from the Board of Regency of her son, Prince Nicholas. "Only market wives bargain in this fashion," continued the interview, which was signed Marie R.* "It is not permissible even to contemplate any replacement of Prince Nicholas. It is even less permissible to make such replacement an object of bargaining. "If the Government really believes that a preponderance of the royal family in the Regency means danger to the country this discloses the Government's own ambition to rule in the Regency Council. Is a second dynasty to rule besides the present royal family? Domination of others than members of the royal family produces no happy results." Anxious Rumanians feared a grave crisis, the pitting of the Royal Dynasty against the Peasant Government, the raising of the issue whether Rumania might not be better off as a republic than with her present eight-year-old King Mihai and three Regents. White-lipped and hard-eyed, Prime Minister Juliu Maniu sought Prince Nicholas, found him closeted with the other Regents, Justice Saratzeanu and Patriarch Miron Cristea. "If Your Royal Highness does not see fit to repudiate this interview," the Prime Minister was reported to have said, "I must place my resignation in the Regency's hands." Prince Nicholas is an amiable, weak-chinned youth, a reputed follower of the religious doctrines of Frank N. D. Buchman, famed for objectionable proselyting of U. S. college students (TIME, July 18, 1927). To gain time, His Royal Highness pleaded that he must consult Court Chamberlain Hiott. Passed two days. Then Court Chamberlain Hiott publicly denied with appropriate indignation that Her Majesty the Dowager Queen Marie had communicated any statement, interview or intimation whatsoever to Universal. "I consider this affair," said he, "a shameful scandal!" Epilog: Eight-year-old King Mihai was trotted out in his first long trousers to receive the homage of the entire cabinet, shake the hand of previously rebuffed Regent Constantin Saratzeanu.

*R. (or Regina)-Queen.