Untrue! Unjust! Unfair!

Crown Prince Mihai would still be enjoying a holiday with his mother in Britain this week if he had not read the Continental edition of the Daily Mail three weeks ago in Paris. In that paper was a squib about King Carol's mistress, red-haired Magda Lupescu. It was an old story to the rest of the world, but news to Crown Prince Mihai.

"Who is this lady friend of daddy's, this Mme Lupescu?'' he asked Colonel Grigorescu, his aide.

The Colonel had to think fast, and before taking Prince Mihai on to London to join Mihai's sad-eyed mother, Princess Helen, he reported the whole affair to King Carol.

His Majesty burned up the telephone with complaints to the Rumanian Legation in Paris. A secretary promptly stomped round to the Paris Daily Mail and demanded that it print a full retraction. This the editors refused to do since the facts were all well established.

"All right," spluttered the secretary, "but how would you like it if Rumanian papers printed the facts about the Prince of Wales?"

This time the Daily Mail was insulted. The diplomat was shown the door.

In London, Crown Prince Mihai spent a few exciting days. He went to the South Kensington Science Museum, drove a fire-engine, was allowed to warm up the engine of one of his mother's cars, had tea in Buckingham Palace. Suddenly King Carol cancelled the rest of his son's vacation, ordered him back to Bucharest. Princess Helen motored her son down to Dover, bade him a tearful farewell. "I'll try to telephone you, mummy, but they won't let me," he cried.

At Calais the small Crown Prince, whose legs are rapidly lengthening, slipped away from fierce Colonel Grigorescu to say a word to Hearst Reporter William Hillman. Up rushed the Colonel, red-faced and out of breath.

"What do you think a ten-year-old boy can say?" he roared in French. "What clo you expect a child like him to understand by your questions?"

Unlike the rest of the Rumanian royal family, pale Princess Helen writes no advertising testimonials and gives few interviews. But this last move of buck-toothed King Carol was more than she could bear. To the Daily Mail, cause of her woes, she said:

"I am threatened in messages I have received from my former husband with the prospect of never seeing my boy again. I hope public opinion may help preserve for me the rights I claim as a mother who has been treated with cruel heartlessness and whose patience has come to an end."

King Carol was attending the autumn maneuvers of the Rumanian army at Roman when this interview was telephoned to his private car from London. Shouting above the booming artillery and roaring of airplanes His Majesty cried:

"How untrue, unjust and unfair! To think that this should be thrown in my face when during the two years of my exile in Paris I was not permitted to see Mihai once, although I repeatedly sought permission to do so. Oh, I cannot believe that this interview was authentic. It was probably invented!"

In an effort to attract sympathy to his cause last week, King Carol let it be known that a "mysterious and unknown assassin" had been caught in his private car. By the week's end he had other troubles. In a crisis brought on by a League of Nations' proposal to appoint a financial controller for Rumania, the Rumanian Cabinet resigned.

Mihai's remark about being unable to telephone his mother did Carol no good in Rumania or elsewhere. He ordered that the Crown Prince should telephone his mother, at once.

"Oh, Mummy, I've missed you so much!" cried Prince Mihai into the mouthpiece. Next came two explanations. First, Prince Mihai had been recalled to visit his Hohenzollern cousins in Sigmarin-gen, Germany. Then this was cancelled. Next explanation was that he had been recalled to Rumania in order to be with his father on Oct. 16. the latter's birthday.

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