Tycoon Ousted

Rumania has been ruled by Tycoons of the Bratiano family since the foundation of the Kingdom (1881). The Royal Family has merely reigned--a family of puppets--despite the petty intrigues of Queen Marie. Therefore the Kingdom was shaken in its deepest political foundations, last week, when the last of the Tycoons, Vintila Bratiano, was forced to resign as Prime Minister.

The situation cannot be grasped without harking back a year to the Prime Ministry of Vintila Bratiano's late brother, the great Jon Bratiano. He it was who daringly altered the Royal succession and placed upon the Throne a baby King, Mihai I (TIME, Aug. 1, 1927). This stroke of statecraft was designed to maintain the power of the Tycoons unchallenged until the baby king grew up. To make doubly sure, Jon Bratiano set up a Regency of two old men and a youth, all denounced by the Parliamentary Opposition as puppets.

So far so excellent, but then to Jon Bratiano came sudden Death (TIME, Dec. 5).

The paradox of last week was that it was the Regency, hand picked by Jon Bratiano, which demanded that his brother, Prime Minister Vintila Bratiano resign on or before Dec. 1, 1928. Naturally the insulted Tycoon resigned next morning, after an all night session of his Cabinet. The most ominous feature of the situation is that Vintila Bratiano has been for many years Finance Minister and has conducted single handed the negotiations with international financiers for a $250,000,000 loan to Rumania--a project now complete in all its details and on the very verge of consummation.

The Regency apparently acted in the belief that Peasant Leader Juliu Maniu, who staged gigantic mass demonstrations last spring (TIME, March 26), might attempt a revolution or coup d'etat capable of toppling down not only the Tycoon but the Throne. To forestall this the Regency proposed to call Peasant Maniu to the Prime Ministry. So cataclysmic were events in Rumania, last week, that any prediction seemed mere folly. The fact that international financiers will now almost certainly refuse to underwrite the vitally needed National Loan, unless the Regency recalls Vintila Bratiano to the Prime Ministry, seemed the chief indication that Rumania's ousted Tycoon may be down, not out.