New Regent

"I am only a grandmother now," said Marie of Rumania to a U. S. visitor not long ago with a resigned, gracious swish of her mourning veils. But last week everyone knew that Her Majesty hoped to be elected one of the three Regents of her grandson Boy-King Mihai, in succession to Regent George V. Buzdugan who died fortnight ago of uremia and inflammation of the lungs (TIME, Oct. 14).

Parliament met to elect the new Regent amid tensest excitement, for representatives of the majority Peasant Party had not yet been instructed for whom they were to vote. With a worried pucker in his brow Peasant Prime Minister Juliu Maniu convoked his Cabinet for a last minute huddle behind locked doors. Several U. S. correspondents present bulletined to their editors: The likeliest candidate for the Regency is Queen Marie.

Hoary and respected Professor Nicholas Jorga, onetime tutor of King Mihai's harum scarum and now exiled father, Prince Carol, rose from his Deputy's seat to propose the candidacy of his old pupil. A member of the Royal Family should be elected, he urged, but not a woman. "Have you forgotten," he cried, "that the Constitution restricts membership in the Regency Council as well as occupancy of the Throne to males?"

The representatives had not forgotten, but there was undoubtedly a majority ready to rush through the amendment or anything else, if Peasant Prime Minister Juliu Maniu should crack the whip. At last he issued from the Cabinet huddle, proposed a most unfamiliar name: "Constantin Saratzeanu."

"Who is Saratzeanu?" cried several flabbergasted representatives, and others indignantly moved for a temporary suspension of the session which the Speaker granted. In the interval the Cabinet retired into a second huddle and henchmen of the Prime Minister busily circulated among the rustic members of the Peasant Party, to explain that Constantin Saratzeanu was an honorable though inconspicuous rooster on the Rumanian Supreme Court bench.

When the vote was finally taken docile peasants rolled up an overwhelming total of 455 ballots out of 486 for Rooster Saratzeanu. Only nine representatives voted for Prince Carol. The remaining 22 ballots went to a popular Army corps commander, General Presan. The 39 members of the Liberal party, die-hard partisans of Queen Marie, abstained from voting entirely, announced themselves "scandalized" at the Peasant Prime Minister's last minute whip-cracking for a nonentity. Reporters and photographers found him totally ignorant of what had been passing in Parliament, astounded by the news.

The other two regents: Patriarch Miron Cristea of the Rumanian Orthodox Church, a venerable graybeard who barely survived a desperate illness last month; and sprightly Prince Nicholas of Rumania, a younger son of Dowager Queen Marie who minds his mother in matters of state but sometimes ignores her injunctions not to frequent night clubs.