King for Peace

United Pressman Ralph Heinzen, chief of the Paris Bureau, staked his reputation last week on a dispatch opening with this flat statement, "Leopold III, tragic young King of the Belgians, will attempt the hazardous role of Italo-Ethiopian Peace Maker which cost Sir Samuel Hoare his Foreign Ministry and shook the prestige of Premier Laval of France. . . . Rumors current in European diplomatic quarters for several weeks that Leopold was endeavoring to bridge Anglo-Italian differences are based upon fact." Two days before, Paris Correspondent Edmond Taylor of the Chicago Tribune went off the same deep end. In Geneva fear of another "Deal" concocted behind the League's back caused Leaguophile correspondents to raise loud alarms. Their spokeswoman, Mme Genevieve Tabouis, declared that in her opinion Belgium's King, who conferred with Britain's King-Emperor last week, has two main and immediate objects: 1) to dissuade Britain from supporting oil sanctions which he believes would ignite a European war to the particular disadvantage of Belgium; 2) to make sure that Belgium is a party to any further secret British-German dickering which might weaken still more the Treaty of Versailles and imperil Belgium further.

That His Majesty should have such objects seemed to infuriate Mme Tabouis and Leaguophiles generally. As devoted antiFascists they are now against any peaceful solution which is not against Fascism. Last week they opened a whispering campaign to the effect that only the corruption of the tellers of the French Chamber of Deputies accounts for the recent majorities received by Premier Pierre Laval. Without a scrap of proof, they rumored that the majority of 20 won by the Laval Cabinet after the Premier's defense of his efforts to make peace at Ethiopia's expense would have been a majority of only eight had the votes been honestly counted. Most Frenchmen promptly asked each other why, if there was crockery among the tellers, there was not enough crockery to have tipped the scale in so close a vote.

Not only King Leopold but also Professor Paul van Zeeland, the "New Deal'' devaluationist Premier of Belgium, today frankly regard everything else as secondary to the menace of a Germany which is putting over one secret deal after another with Britain, the first to tear up the naval clauses of the Treaty of Versailles (TIME, June 24), the second to tear up the air armament clauses (TIME, Jan. 6), and perhaps others suspected in Belgium but as yet undisclosed. Since King Leopold's sister is the Crown Princess of Italy, family ties make His Majesty a pleader of Italy's cause in addition to Belgium's at the Court of St. James's.

Last week in Brussels the Court issued a peculiar denial which did not touch upon King Leopold but denied that "Belgium" had been "commissioned" by the Great Powers to seek a peaceful Italo-Ethiopian settlement--i. e. the denial covered something which had never been asserted.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.