Prince, Sailor, Brandy

The fundamental democracy of Scandinavians is traditional, ingrained. King Haakon VII and Queen Maud of Norway habitually walk about the streets of Oslo (the capital) completely unattended, sometimes even escape being recognized by their subjects for hours. King Haakon's elder brother, King Christian X of Denmark, adopts only a slightly greater reserve toward his subjects when he and Queen Alexandria drive about Copenhagen. At Stockholm, Queen Victoria of Sweden often amiably looks on while King Gustaf V plays tennis with Swedish army officers, or with almost anyone to whom he happens to have taken a fancy. Therefore, Scandinavian newspapers noted with calm approval last week that when H. R. H. Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden, Duke of Skane, recently saw a certain insignificant U. S. sailor on the point of drowning, he doffed his royal shoes and coat, jumped in, rescued the sailor and finally succeeded in keeping the whole affair dark for some weeks.

The incident, it appears, took place while the Prince was walking beside one of the numerous waterways which have caused Stockholm to be referred to as "The Venice of the North." The Prince's aide, who was supposed to be accompanying him, rushed up just in time to help Prince Gustaf carry the unconscious sailor into a rough seaman's cafe nearby. There an incident occurred which stirred many a Swede as much as the rescue itself.

The Prince ordered a stiff glass of brandy for the sailor, forgetting that under the Swedish "Goteborg System" spirits can be furnished only when solid food is also ordered. The barmaid, mindful of the law, refused to furnish a glass of brandy to the namesake of that mighty toper, Gustavus Adolphus, unless the Prince would order at least a bit of smorbrod....*

Despatches reported that the barmaid yielded when Prince Gustaf's aide whispered his identity in her ear. Swedish antiprohibitionists were vexed.

At Manhattan, Swedes proudly recalled that Crown Prince Gustaf is an excellent all-round athlete, an amateur archeologist of considerable practical ability, a tolerable singer and a vigorous champion of religious culture. His younger brother, the dramastist-poet Prince William, Duke of Sodermanland, is perhaps better known abroad (TIME, Oct. 19). But the activities of Crown Prince Gustaf, in connection with the World Church Conference at Stockholm (TIME, Aug. 24 et seq), his archeological excavations on the site of ancient Asine, and his work as a member of the Swedish Olympic Committee, have attracted considerable quiet notice. His most widely bruited remark was allegedly made to Lady Louise of Mountbatten (formerly Princess of Battenburg) at the time when she was being pressed to marry him by his second cousin George V, R. I.:

"You love somebody else. Well, so do I, for my heart is in my wife's grave. We both need companionship. Love can wait."

His first wife, the Princess Margaret Victoria, daughter of Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, had died in 1920. Princess Louise of Mountbatten heeded his "rational wooing," married him in 1923, bore him a child which did not live last May, has proved a kindly step-mother to his four sons and his daughter Ingrid.

* The Scandinavian "sandwich": a piece of bread upon which is served anything from a slice of coarse goat cheese to most elaborate concoctions of hard-boiled eggs, shrimps, chopped fish pudding, etc. The dish is held in affectionate regard by all ranks of society. It may appear at any of the four to seven meals eaten by the various classes, and is the usual "between-meal snack." At Christmas, candy representations of smorbrod are popular, and are often expensively packed in gift boxes.