Monarchy Front

World war means world revolution, and many a monarchy perishes in its course.

No tsar has lost his head as yet in World War II, but Adolf Hitler has already taken four royal capitals and threatened several more. From the agitated monarchy front came the following news last week: > Too preoccupied with her frontier watch, Rumania failed to mark a historic anniversary. Ten years ago a Rumanian Army plane brought Carol of Hohenzollern back from exile. Since then Carol II has learned well the trade of Balkan king, burnished his capital with western splendor, and stuck to his grandfather's policy of trusting no one. Last week King Carol prudently passed up anniversary fetes, lay low in his handsome new palace.

> George VI, target for the first time last fortnight of direct Nazi press attacks, congratulated his troops and their French allies upon their valiant retreat from Dunkirk, visited an arms factory to observe munition-making gains, fired a target full of creditable holes with a Bren gun.

> Driven at last from his country, Haakon VII was reported a refugee in England (see p. 24).

-Denmark's tall Christian X, chastened by two months of Nazi occupation, received Danish bigwigs on Constitution Day, adjured them to stand fast through days of duress.

>Hollow-cheeked old Gustav V rode out to Stockholm's stadium, warned 30,000 holiday-making Swedes: "The danger is not past. ... I therefore exhort you not to relax." >Bitter, broken and bewildered, Leopold III, King of the Belgians, brooded in his castle at Laeken, on Brussels' edge. Execrated by his allies, who were not to be placated by the restrained comments of the British Prime Minister, repudiated by his own Government, by his overseas empire, by approximately one-third of his eight million people (fled to France), by nearly every important personage of his country, Leopold was barred by his German captors from stating his case to the world. Joseph Ernest Cardinal Van Roey, Primate of Belgium, heard his story and pronounced his surrender a "noble" act.

U. S. Ambassador John Cudahy visited him, received Leopold's own letter of explanation to President Roosevelt, which failed to reach the President except by press report.

Leopold's case: "The time comes when a man has to decide between sacrificing life and holding out as a theatrical gesture." Thousands of Belgian refugees poured back from Dunkirk, Calais, other cities to which they had fled, looking along gutted streets for lost husbands, wives, parents, children. The King had to appeal to the International Red Cross to see to the safety of his own three small, motherless children. No one seemed to know where Crown Prince Baudouin Albert, aged 9, and his brother and sister were. Paris said in Rome; Berlin said in southern France.

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