Vintila After Jon

Death sped unseen across a white-walled courtyard, passed up a marble stair, and seemed to pause, irresolute, last week, in the bedchamber of Rumania's greatest man. The room, warmed by a great tile stove, was cozy; and Prime Minister Jon Bratiano, 63, clung hard to warmth and life. He could not speak, for inflammation brought on by blood infection, had gagged his throat; but with a steady hand he wrote to the physicians who bent over him: "Do not be impatient. I shall make a good fight."

Three throat operations, the last performed without an anesthetic, had not daunted Bratiano's spirit. He composed himself to sleep, inhaling pure oxygen, his swollen throat kept open by an inserted silver tube. As midnight tolled from a distant spire, the Premier stirred and seemed to rally. Then drops of an evil pus were discovered in his throat. Blood poisoning had set in. The great statesman who had doubled the area of Rumania during his eleven premierships was told that Death would surely claim him before dawn.

Jangling telephones brought to Jon Bratiano's death bed, at 3 a. m., the three Regents* of Rumania, also Dowager Queen Marie, Princess Helene (mother of 6-year-old King Michael), and all the Cabinet Ministers, headed by the Premier's brother, Vintila Bratiano.

As Queen Marie approached her old and loyal friend, she asked in French: "Do you feel better?"

Tears started from M. Bratiano's eyes as he made a supreme effort and managed to gasp: "Yes, Your Majesty. How good and gracious it is of you to come here at such an hour!"

After the Dowager Queen came Princess Helene./- Quiet and considerate, she gazed with pity at M. Bratiano for some moments, then withdrew without uttering a word.

Meanwhile Queen Marie had remarked to a physician: "It is less than four months since the King [Ferdinand I, her husband] died (TIME, Aug. 1). . . . Now another great figure is in the shadows of Death. . . . Poor Rumania has many crosses to bear."

By 5 a. m., Premier Bratiano, writing with iron diligence, had composed and signed a short will (leaving everything to his wife and son Georges), and had written notes to each of his Ministers, to the Regents, and to members of the Royal Family. With these duties fulfilled, his strength ebbed fast, and shortly Patriarch Miron Cristea administered last rites.

Jon Bratiano died at 6:45 a. m., without having resigned his Premiership.

At 6:50, Finance Minister Vintila Bratiano left his dead brother's bedchamber and hastened to present the Cabinet's resignation to the three Regents. They at once "commanded" him to assume the Premiership. Soon there was a new Premier Bratiano--with all Cabinet posts redistributed exactly as before.

Premier Vintila Bratiano, 60, has his late brother's massive, commanding stature, and merely lacks in face and feature a trifle of Jon's finely chiseled strength. The nose has not so elegantly satyrlike a tip. The beard and mustache are a shade darker grey and notably less neatly trimmed than were those of Jon. Finally Vintila's eyes seem contented within the shelter of his heavy brows. The eyes of Jon twinkled or darted lightnings.

Both brothers passed their latter youth in studying engineering at Paris; but, whereas Jon developed or acquired a flair for art and the Parisian amenities, Vintila remains resolutely bourgeois. The Jon Bratiano mansion at Bucharest teems harmoniously with objects and works of art. Vintila, on the contrary, possesses more than one cheaply gilded statuet.

Both brothers entered politics under the aegis of their great father, Jon Bratiano Sr. (1821-91), a fiery patriot who led the Rumanian uprising against the Turks in 1848, and established the present Hohenzollern dynasty on the Rumanian throne, in 1866. As his two sons developed, the superiority of Jon Bratiano Jr. over Vintila in statesmanly dexterity became manifest; and young Jon succeeded his father in the Premiership as early as 1909. Meanwhile Vintila occupied himself almost steadily at the Finance Ministry and became, in 1907, Mayor of Bucharest.

During the ensuing decade, that is up to last week, the brothers maintained this same distinction in their activities. Jon was the far-sighted international statesman who brought Rumania into the World War on the side of the Allies, and returned from the Paris peace conference with a pocket full of new maps doubling the area of his country. But Vintila has steadily pursued a career of both public and private finance, and, since 1922, has been almost continuously Finance Minister.

The body of Jon Bratiano was moved from his home, on the morning of his death, to lie in state at the great national Athenaeum Palace, in Bucharest. Meanwhile the very Opposition leaders who have been threatening even armed revolt against the Bratiano dictatorship of late, were busy in the Chamber of Deputies eulogizing the unquestioned patriotism of their dead foe. By common consent a political truce was declared until Jon Bratiano should be decently in his grave. Meanwhile Premier Vintila Bratiano received privately such potent Opposition leaders as Dr. Juliu Maniu, head of the National Peasant Party. How firm is the Bratiano grip today?

In plain figures the Liberal (Bratiano) party holds 317 seats in a chamber of 387 which was elected last summer for the usual term of four years. Thus Prime Minister Vintila Bratiano is technically secure, as was shown by the speed with which the Chamber voted confidence, last week, in his new ministry. The fact remains, however, that all the Opposition parties claim (with indisputable justice) that the last election was put through by the Bratianos with flagrant coercion of the electorate. Ergo, the Opposition leaders demanded of Vintila, last week, that he consent to a dissolution of Parliament and the holding of free elections--something quite unprecedented in Rumania. After taking counsel with his own party and Opposition leaders, Vintila made a resolute statement:

"I am willing to form a coalition government with all parties represented on their proportional strength, but I am unwilling to accede to demands for the dissolution of Parliament.

"Our party has a majority in Parliament. All the soundest and most influential elements in the country are behind us."

The abdicated onetime Crown Prince Carol of Rumania (father of Baby King Michael) continued to reside in his country villa near Dinard, France, last week. To a correspondent, who asked if the death of Jon Bratiano, foe to Carol, would cause him to return at once to Bucharest, the abdicated prince replied: "You see, I am not preparing to leave for Bucharest. I must await developments in the situation in my country."

At Bucharest Premier Vintila Bratiano said: "There is no chance of Carol returning. The death of my lamented brother spelled the end of the Carolist agitation. . . .

"It can no longer be said that our government policy is actuated by the fact that its head is the personal enemy of Carol, which was the constant insinuation as long as my brother lived. . . .

"If there had been any active forces, civilian or military, working for his return we would have known it within the last 48 hours and we would lave known how to deal with it. ... Perfect calm reigns; our army is completely loyal to the Constitution."

Despite the "perfect calm" prevailing in Rumania, Premier Vintila Bratiano found it necessary to hold one more conference with party leaders on the very train which carried his brother's coffin out to the Bratiano estate at Florica for burial. Arrived there, the harassed politicians assumed somber mourning faces, then followed the coffin and the royal family through immense crowds of somberly clad peasants, some of whom sprinkled holy water on the slowly passing bier.

At the grave, Mme. Jon Bratiano* swayed and seemed nigh to fainting. She was embraced and steadied by the Dowager Queen Marie, who, turning toward the coffin as it was lowered into the earth, apostrophized thus: "Great and good friend of my youth and of my riper years! As long as there is still breath in me, for all that I am worth I shall try with God's help to carry on and uphold King Ferdinand's and your great work. Amen."

As the funeral train returned to Bucharest Premier Vintila Bratiano held an extraordinary session of his cabinet in one of the cars, and in another the Dowager Queen Marie addressed correspondents: "Jon Bratiano was a leader, a master, a man, whose unswerving friendship bound us together through long years of hard and difficult labor. We believed in each other, and my absolute loyalty to his ideals made us collaborators who kept the faith. I was strong enough to rejoice over his strength. . . . He now belongs to the ages. . . . We can but bow our heads."

*Prince Nicholas, Patriarch of Rumania Miron Cristea, and Chief Justice Buzdugan.

/-Although she is the mother of King Michael (Mihai), she ranks below his grandmother, Dowager Queen Marie, because the latter has been a reigning sovereign, while Princess Helene has not.

*Nee Princess Stirbey, sister of Prince Barbu Stirbey, recently premier (June-July,1 1927).