Three Kings on the Wire

In the Royal Palace at Sinaia the No. 1 statesman of Rumania, suave, hard M. Nicholas Titulescu, lately had his King on the carpet.

"Sire, you must send away Mme Lupescu," he told scapegrace Carol II. "Also you must dismiss your private secretary and four other Court officials. Here is the list."

Quivering with rage His Majesty replied : "Not even the Hohenzollern head of my house would have ventured to ask so much from me. How dare you make such requests?"

"I make no requests, Sire," purred M. Titulescu. "These are the orders of France."

Quite possibly they were. France fears Nazi penetration into Rumania and looks with utmost suspicion on the blue-swastikaed Iron Guard of M. Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, mystic and fanatical "Rumanian Hitler." His slogan: "Jesus, King and country!"

In Bucharest last week everyone was in terror of the Iron Guard. Had not a blue-swastikaed youth assassinated Premier Ion Duca (TIME, Jan. 8)? Had not another youngster burst in upon the Public Prosecutor as he was eating breakfast to scream: "I was an accomplice in Duca's assassination. Arrest me! Do your worst. Christ and Rumania!"? All Bucharest believed last week that the "Death List" of prominent Rumanians marked for assassination by the 200 terrorists of the Iron Guard was headed by M. Titulescu with Premier Tatarescu about half way down. It was a terrible time for Rumania to have to receive a foreign monarch. Yet undaunted from Bulgaria came brisk little Tsar Boris and Tsaritza Ioanna who is a daughter of the King of Italy. What if they should be assassinated?

The Tsar has a way with him. In Bulgaria he drives his own car unguarded about the countryside, chats with peasants who find him far more democratic than most Bulgarian owners of automobiles. Arriving in Rumania last week the Tsar of the Bulgars created a sensation by strolling up and down the platform, gossiping with country folk when his special train halted at a small village. "King Carol never does that," frowned a Rumanian official. "It was an act, one might say, almost undiplomatic."

In Bucharest the visiting royalty were rushed through the city proper and out to the suburban Cotroceni Palace. There Tsar Boris and King Carol slipped head phones on their ears and called up King Alexander of Jugoslavia, 250 miles away in Belgrade. Alexander, who plays the game of France and is encouraged by her to play the Dictator in Jugoslavia, had just the day before broken one premier and made another. The secret telephone conference of the three kings was supposed to prepare public opinion for a pact tying up all three Balkan kingdoms with Czechoslovakia, Greece and Turkey in an ambitious union against fascism. In this great design France and Russia, implacable foes of fascism, are supposed to be using their influence to forge an anti-fascist chain across Europe from the English Channel to the Golden Horn.

With Rumania's parliament set to meet Feb. 1, Hohenzollern King Carol seemed to have been jockeyed out of any dominant position by M. Constantine ("Dino") Bratianu, last of the famed Bratianu Brothers who ruled Rumania for so long. His Majesty had demanded that Premier Tatarescu be elected leader of the Liberal Party. Flouting the King, the Liberals elected ''Dino" Bratianu their leader. He and M. Titulescu are supposed to be as close as sardines. Though Carol is an arrant scapegrace, Rumanians began to feel sorry for him as his House of Hohenzollern seemed about to be downed once more by the House of Bratianu.

Where Mme Lupescu was the King made nobody's business last week, refusing to divulge whether he had sent her out of the country as M. Titulescu demanded. Like the original Madame de Pompadour she is red haired, with a camellia skin. Only her pudgy fingers suggest that her father was a Jewish junk dealer.

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