Poster-Pasters

Working swiftly and in the dead of night, friends of the abdicated Crown Prince Carol of Roumania (TIME, Jan. 11, 18) pasted up enormous scarlet caricatures upon the buildings of Bucharest, the capital. Had Queen Marie (Carol's mother) ridden abroad in the early dawn, she would have beheld a coarse likeness of her alleged "court favorite," Prince Babu Stirbey, leering at her everywhere above the caption, "This Is He!"

The police, of course, tore the posters down as fast as they could. That night, the Carolists pasted up still more, pasted an especially large poster directly opposite the apartments of Queen Marie. This time the caricature of Prince Stirbey displayed him in an attitude highly uncomplimentary to the Queen. As Her Majesty glanced out the window, the insinuating caption fairly shrieked at her: How do you like him?"

This time Prince Babu Stirbey allegedly telephoned the Chief of Police of Bucharest and demanded the arrest of the Carolist Deputy, Gregoire Filipescu, who had admitted publicly that he was the chief of the poster-pasters. Strangely enough, Prince Babu Stirbey's demand was not only flatly denied but he was allegedly advised to depart at once from Bucharest, advice which he immediately heeded, according to despatches.

The Carolist press, although mercilessly repressed by the Government censor, managed to insinuate the alleged significance of all these developments. It hinted that before Prince Carol set out to attend the funeral of Queen Alexandra (TIME, Jan. 11,) he "encountered Prince Babu Stirbey in the antechamber of Queen Marie's apartments and proceeded to box his ears."

Late in the week a despatch from Bucharest reported: "It is now openly rumored that King Ferdinand countermanded the order of Prince Babu Stirbey for the arrest of Deputy Filipescu. . . . The abdication of Crown Prince Carol is now widely interpreted as a protest against Prince Babu Stirbey's having compromised his mother and made his father appear ridiculous."