Leve de Koning!

The House of Representatives' chief doorkeeper lifted his voice above the groundswell murmurings of Senators, Congressmen, diplomats, Supreme Court Justices and others in the packed House chamber. "Mr. Speaker," he called out, "the King of the Belgians."

Hands characteristically clasped behind his back, tall, 28-year-old King Baudouin, slim and erect in a plain military uniform, walked to the Speaker's rostrum, bowed to the left and the right, told the joint session of Congress: "I am here to register the solidarity between the people of Belgium and America."

It was Baudouin's first state visit to a foreign country since he became King on the abdication of his father, Leopold III, in 1951. A shy, serious bachelor who hates pomp and loves sport (golf, billiards, swimming, skiing, motorcycling), the King said in good English that he came from "a country old enough to have been spoken of proudly by Julius Caesar,"* called America the "land of youth," drew according nods from Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter, 76, and Rhode Island's

Senator Theodore Francis Green, 91. Beginning a 21-day visit to the U.S., the King of the Belgians crisscrossed Washington with the crowded schedule of a dignitary and the limitless curiosity of a high school student on a senior-class trip to the capital. He laid wreaths at Mount Vernon and the Tomb of the Unknowns, was briefed on outer space by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, lunched in the Pentagon with Defense Secretary Neil McElroy, discovered a portrait of his grandfather Albert I at the Smithsonian Institution, impressed National Gallery of Art Director John Walker by correctly judging the relative age of two Byzantine Madonnas. At a White House state dinner, the King met many old friends of the Belgians, including Herbert Hoover, 1915-19 chairman of the Commission for Relief in Belgium and friend of King Albert.

Toward week's end the royal party flew to Detroit, where the King tried out G.M.'s experimental, bubble-topped Cadillac Cyclone, gave equal time to Ford and Chrysler, heard familiar cries of "Leve de Koning!" (in Flemish: "Long live the King!") from some of the city's 38,000 residents of Belgian descent. Moving fast, he did Chicago in 20 hours, ended his week in Dallas. With reserve strength needed for a dozen more cities, including visits to Disneyland, SAC headquarters and a ticker-tape parade in Manhattan, Baudouin took a day off, enjoyed a relaxing round of golf, matched grooved swings with Old Master Ben Hogan. No one kept score.

*Of the Gauls, said Pundit Caesar, "the bravest are the Belgians." Reasons, as Caesar saw them: 1) the Belgians were far off the path of Roman traders and thus far from the enervating fripperies of civilization, and 2) they lived across the Rhine from the Germans, with whom they were fighting all the time.

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