Red Threat, Mad Engagement

Ticklish in the extreme were two vital problems faced and dealt with last week by beady-eyed Professor Julius Maniu, peasant-born Prime Minister of Rumania.

First came alarming reports from Rumania's Bessarabian frontier that just across the border Soviet troops were mobilizing. In Moscow the Province of Bessarabia is regarded as an Alsace-Lorraine, basely stolen by Rumania while the young Soviet Union was battling for its very life in 1918. In the atlases used by Soviet schoolchildren Bessarabia is shown as still part of Russia, labeled: "Temporarily under Rumanian Military Occupation." Sooner or later blood is bound to be spilled over this issue, and reports of the Soviet mobilization made Prime Minister Maniu fear the spilling might begin last week.

Hastily he summoned General Henry Cihoski. Minister of War. While they conferred one rash Bucharest editor put out an Extra, headlined: Russia Masses Troops For European War!

"Arrest that editor!" commanded General Cihoski, and a little later Professor Maniu announced that the British, French and Polish Ministers had pledged him the joint support of their Governments if needed. "Personally I prefer to believe that no emergency exists," said M. Maniu to correspondents. He went on to suggest that the Soviet mobilization was to pre vent the escape from Russia into Rumania of peasants made desperate by the oppression of the Moscow Regime.

With his major international problem thus well in hand, M. Maniu turned reluctantly to a pile of documents just brought by special courier from the Rumanian Legation at Berlin, dealing with the ab normality of Count Alexander von Hochberg, fiance of Princess Ileana of Rumania (TIME, Feb. 10).

One fine afternoon the Princess went out with Count Alexander, to be present while the University Student's Association presented him with a gold medal for knowing his skis. H. R. H.'s personal adjutant. Colonel Manolescu, was not quick enough to prevent her from impulsively telling the students that she loved and would marry the Count. "It is a love match!" she cried, "The happiest sort of love match!"

What could the Rumanian Government do? Princess Ileana is not in line for the Throne, has a private fortune of $260,000, and is of age. The King of England can forbid the marriage of any member of the Royal Family, but the King and the Government of Rumania have such power only where the marriage involves the Throne. Moreover Dowager Queen Marie backed her daughter, called Count Alexander "an extremely sympathetic person, especially welcome to me because of his English blood."--His mother was Mary Theresa ("Daisy") Cornwallis-West, kinswoman of the English Earl De La Warr; and Queen Marie is of course of English birth, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria.

Not until last week did the chorus of public indignation at Bucharest swell to such volume that the Government was forced to investigate the Count. From Berlin came evidence that his father, the Prince of Pless, was once a member of that effeminate clique who surrounded Kaiser Wilhelm II shortly before the War. Prime Minister Maniu was evidently convinced by the documents from Berlin that Count Alexander takes after his father. Subsequent events were odd. Accompanied only by the Chief of Police, the Count and Princess Ileana went to the Bucharest railway station, where they said goodbye without embracing and he took the Orient Express for Vienna. Next the Rumanian Government announced that Princess Ileana had voluntarily terminated her engagement. She and her mother left on a yachting cruise to Egypt. The incident seemed closed. Bucharest newsorgans-- the most venomous on earth--stopped printing such stories as that a young man of Count Alexander's acquaintance "committed suicide from motives of jealousy on hearing of his engagement."

But presently the Rumanian Royal yacht hove into Constantinople and Princess Ileana--flatly contradicting the announcement of the Rumanian Government--said, with chin in air, "I still intend to marry Alexander."

In Bucharest the Marshal of the Court, M. Constantine Hiott, who has weathered in the past ten years a series of ghastly scandals touching nearly every member of the Rumanian Royal House, was at last at the end of his patience, vowed that if this "mad engagement" is persisted in he will resign. Colonel Man'olescu, the adjutant who failed to stop the Princess, was relieved of his command, put on the pension list, told to keep mum.

Ignoring the Princess, resolute Bucharest police removed from shopwindows and destroyed all pictures showing Ileana with her Alex. He, ferreted out by correspondents at Cannes, said:

"We love one another. I have done nothing to be ashamed of. My fiancee knows me well enough to trust me. We are going to be married in Bucharest. April 27."

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