Terrible Decision

"Examine my daughters!" commanded Alfonso XIII, moody Last of the Bourbons, recently in London. Since his flight from Spain the ex-King has been thinking furiously about family matters, resembling in that respect fabled King Lear.

First the Harley Street specialist examined Daughter Beatriz, 22, recently engaged to her handsome cousin Prince Alvaro d'Orleans. Next the specialist examined Daughter Maria Christina, 19, not engaged to anybody. When their ordeal was finally over the two young Infantas, tearful and clinging to one another, re- turned from London to Paris, rushed to the consoling arms of their beautiful mother.

Grimly ex-King Alfonso studied the specialists' reports. They confirmed what everyone has assumed. Daughters Beatriz and Maria Christina are like their mother. They are "carriers" of the dread blood disease haemophilia. When he had read the reports, Alfonso XIII as Head of the House of Bourbon issued this edict: Neither of his daughters may ever marry. Amid tremendous sensation the engagement of the Infanta Beatriz was broken last week. With her own hands she had made most of her wedding gown, was to have been married with semi-royal pomp at Fontainebleau.

When a haemophile receives the slightest scratch he begins to bleed profusely and the wound heals so slowly that the haemophile may easily bleed to death. Well ex-King Alfonso knows that ex-Queen Victoria Eugenie of Spain transmitted haemophilia to their sickly son. Spain's ex-heir, Alfonso, Prince of Asturias. That the poor boy has lived all these years is a miracle of science and a tragedy. Had the Crown Prince been stronger, unpopular King Alfonso might have abdicated in his son's favor which might perhaps have saved the dynasty.

Only males can suffer haemophilia. Only females can transmit it. Mysterious and incurable,-- this rare disease blighted the last of the Romanovs as it blights the last of the Bourbons. Tsar Nicholas II discovered too late that Tsarina Alexandra was a "carrier," that their son the Tsarevitch Alexis was a haemophile. The frantic mother's efforts to find a cure for her son brought her under the sway of Rasputin, the "Black Monk," who seemed for a time to be able to stop the Tsare-vitch's bleeding and promised a cure. Monk Rasputin's ascendancy over Tsar & Tsarina was a major factor in the House of Romanov's fall. There were those last week who sympathized with ex-King Alfonso in his terrible decision.

Ex-Queen Victoria Eugenie did not sympathize. Reliable reports revealed the Spanish Infantas' mother as their champion. She is not, like His Most Catholic Majesty, unalterably opposed to birth control or sterilization. In Paris last week she was understood to have urged her husband strongly to consider all alternatives. Her daughters could enjoy no small degree of happiness as wives with very small chance of giving birth to a haemophile.

Tempted by these suggestions, tugged by a father's love, ex-King Alfonso rose eventually superior to temptation, was said to have voiced his "horror." Pious, he registered a vow to prevent the marriage of either of his daughters by every means within his power.

*Because males alone are heir to haemophilia, Dr. Carroll Collins Lafleur Birch, associate in internal medicine at University of Illinois Medi-cal School, reasoned that some peculiar female property suppressed the disease in women and girls. Most obvious difference between males & females is the sexual apparatus. Therefore Dr. Birch prepared an ovarian extract, injected it into a boy who came of a family of bleeders, dispelled all symptoms of the malady for eleven months (TIME, July 6).

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