Royalty Returns

Queen Marie of Rumania received a cablegram from Bucharest last week, at Louisville, Ky. A few hours later she had engaged by telegraph staterooms C-47 to C-53/- inclusive on the Cunarder Berengaria sailing five days later for Europe. Next day Queen Marie authorized a statement:

"It is true that Her Majesty has received no official call to return to Rumania, but since there have been so many conflicting reports regarding the King's health she feels she must return at once in case there is any possibility of there being any truth in these reports."

There was no lack of sufficient reasons for Her Majesty's return: 1) King Ferdinand's imperfect "health" is both physical and political. A crisis both for the King as a man and for the man as a King has long been imminent (TIME, Jan. 11). 2) Despatches from Bucharest reported Queen Marie's "palace clique" to be holding its own with difficulty, since her departure, against the renewed onslaughts of the minority parties. Her Majesty is the political Generalissimo of the Crown. Having sped to Manhattan, she motored up the Hudson to Tuxedo, and rested there, awaiting the sailing of the Berengaria, at the estate of Charles Edwin Mitchell, President of the National City Bank which, with more than $1,000,000,000 capital, is the biggest in the U. S. Royal Words. Prior to her departure Queen Marie was directly quoted as follows: "On this trip America has seen me. . . . Next time I want to see America. . . . "You of America seem perfectly healthy, perfectly efficient. But one can be that and still miss much. Poetry, religion, tradition and poise -- do you sufficiently value them? . . . Why, you have hardly let me finish a sentence during my tour before rushing me off to see something else. . . . You are young. Old Europe can teach you spiritual education. . . . "But you have been very kind to me! The hotel keepers learned, for example, about my dislike for warm rooms and adjusted the heat accordingly. You know, I am descended from Queen Victoria, who always sat in a draft, and I so often long for my grandmamma's draft. . . .

"Why did I come? Well, when I went to the Peace Conference at Paris after the War they also asked me that question, and I told them this: 'Every country needs a face. So when you all gather about for your deliberations, I want Rumania to have a face. I am here to be that face, to make Rumania something more personal than statistics and maps. ... I gave to the Rumanian people six children, and I came to love the Rumanians as my own people. . . . Remember, when you belittle Rumania, you are treading on the heart of a woman.'"

Carol Sued. Queen Marie's oldest son, the abdicated Crown Prince Carol of Rumania, was defended last week in Paris by potent Socialist barrister Paul Boncour against Mme. Zizi Lambrino, his former morganatic wife (TIME, March 15, 22), who began suit to establish the legitimacy of their son Mircea. By his consort, Princess Helene of Greece, Carol had subsequently another son, Prince Michel, now aged five, and heir apparent to the Rumanian throne.

/-The suite built for her cousin Wilhelm II when he was German Emperor and the Berengaria was the Imperator. *In 1922, while he was employed as butler to Herr Johan Scherer, rich Austrian munitions profiteer.