Crownless King

In many a town the station agent ran out of tickets and had to scrawl railway passes on odd bits of cardboard. By train, by bus, by tram, by motor, by cart and by foot, every Belgian who could move went to Brussels last week to see a great King buried, to hear a new King proclaimed.

All night long crowds lined the Rue Royale and the squares before the Royal Palace and the Church of St. Gudule. Before dawn the roofs were black with watchers and one exhausted patriot had fallen out of a tree and been killed. Soon police and soldiers began to line the route along which Albert's body would pass. About breakfast time hawkers were passing up & down selling rolls and chocolate bars and mirrors on sticks for short people to see over the crowd.

At 10 o'clock guns boomed in the distance, followed by the dull patter of muffled drums.* A detachment of mounted police in blue capes and white helmets led the procession. Then came the Guides, Belgium's crack infantry regiment, with little tassels dangling from their caps. British sailors followed, and behind them a dismounted detachment of the 5th Inniskilling Dragoons, the British regiment of which Albert was Colonel-in-Chief. French troops preceded the Paris post of the American Legion. The flags of the Belgian Army formed a quilt of fluttering black, yellow and red against the grey sky. Every regiment was represented by a squad of nine men, marching abreast, the colonel at one end, a private at the other. King Albert's coffin, draped in the national flag, rode on a gun carriage. His trench helmet, wreathed in laurel, his military overcoat and his sword were laid on top. Behind the caisson was led his charger, Titanic, a huge bay with white feet. The King's boots were reversed in the stirrups.

All in overcoats, a great throng of dignitaries followed on foot. Except for the towering bearskin of Britain's Edward of Wales, there was little to distinguish them, but here, plodding along in the fog, were half the Princes of Europe. Crown Prince Leopold led the procession with his brother, Prince Charles, and his brother-in-law, Prince Umberto of Italy. The others:

Tsar Boris of Bulgaria

President Lebrun of France

Prince-Consort Henry of Holland

Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden

Crown Prince Olaf of Norway

Prince Axel of Denmark

Prince Nicholas of Rumania

Prince-Consort Felix of Luxembourg

Prince Sukhodoya of Siam

Prince Paul of Jugoslavia

Inside the cathedral was tremulous with the yellow light of a thousand candles. Years dead is Belgium's great Cardinal Mercier, but his successor, Cardinal van Roey, Archbishop of Malines, sang the Solemn Requiem Mass in sombre black and silver vestments. Though it is a strict rule of Belgian court etiquet that women shall not appear at state funerals, neither etiquet nor prostration from grief could keep gentle Queen Elisabeth from her husband's funeral./- Heavily veiled she slipped through a side door from the sacristy, and took her place on the dais beside President Albert Lebrun of France. At the foot of the coffin Cardinal van Roey pronounced Absolution, and with muted horns the band of the First Grenadiers played the national anthem.

Tension broke sharply as the funeral procession left the cathedral. The first section started off without orders, leaving the gold-laced Marshal of the Court, elderly Count de Patoul, racing wildly down the street after it, waving his cocked hat and shouting. War veterans filled in the gap. Thinking the parade over, police quit their posts. Crowds overflowing the streets blocked the motors of princes & potentates who missed the interment ceremony entirely. The last of Belgium's triumvirate of War heroes, ebullient Burgomaster Max of Brussels, blamed the entire mixup on Minister of the Interior Pierlot, whose nose he threatened to punch. Crowds jammed up against the Palace railings discovered that they had been smeared with sticky black grease to prevent people from clambering on them.

Next morning Belgium forgot its mourning as a new King was proclaimed. Work men had been up all night removing the crowned A's from buildings and monuments and replacing them with crowned L's -- either new or relics of Leopold II. Ceremonies were simple, for the Belgian crown exists only in imagination, sculpture and stationery. Its three kings have had neither crown, sceptre, orb, nor robes of state.

In the khaki uniform of a lieutenant-general, with the crimson sash of the Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold across his breast, 32-year-old Leopold III rode a skittish chestnut through cheering crowds to Parliament. Standing before a large armchair hastily improvised as a throne, he faced Parliament and the diplomatic corps, raised his right hand with index and middle fingers extended, took the 22-word oath of office:

"I swear to observe the Constitution and laws of the Belgian people and to maintain the national independence and integrity of territory."

''Vive le Roi!" roared the crowd, and King he was. The new Crown Prince, chubby three-year-old Prince Baudoin, enjoyed his new white party dress and the uniforms of generals and ambassadors enormously. Off the huge chair into which they had put him he quickly slid and clambered on to the lap of his pale black-clad mother, now Queen Astrid, niece of the King of Sweden.

There followed a very brief speech from the throne in which Leopold III promised to continue his father's policies, and concluded:

"Mesdames et Messieurs, I give myself entirely to Belgium. The Queen will aid me with all her heart in the accomplishment of my duties. We shall bring up our children in love of the Fatherland. May Divine Providence help us!''

*A drum is muffled by covering its head with a black cloth and releasing the snare cords at the bottom.

/-The approaching birth of her first child kept Crown Princess Marie Jose of Italy, Albert's only daughter, in Rome where special services were held for her.

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