Sloppy

Swedish police arrested last week that courtier of King Gustaf V who has been nearest to the font of Swedish chivalry. The exalted prisoner, Baron Nils Stiernstedt, proved touchy. When his captors tried to question him he had a magnificent nervous breakdown. Swedish papers were so scared of the story that Swedes had to dig most details out of Danish papers.

Apparently the Baron, Chancellor of the Royal Masters Orders, had made a good thing out of orders turned back to the Swedish Crown by meticulous relatives after the demise of Swedish knights. Causing these golden gauds to be melted up, the Chancellor, according to Danish reporters, kept the gold himself, converted it into cash, and bought stock in a highly speculative firm engaged in the manufacture of Swedish skin food, lipsticks and eyebrow pencils.

After embezzling $15,000 from the melting up of orders, the Court Chamberlain apparently embezzled an additional $10,000 from the estate of His Majesty's brother Prince Carl. According to the Danish Press, socialite Swedes made last minute efforts to save the Court Chamberlain from arrest by presenting him with gifts nearly sufficient to cover his embezzlements. When wind of all this was whiffed by the Socialist Cabinet of Premier Hansson last week, efforts to rehabilitate the Court Chamberlain ceased and he was dismissed by King Gustaf, both from the Royal Court and from the Court of the Duke of Vaestergoetland, Prince Carl.

Sly Danes were not above pointing out that housekeeping in the Swedish Royal household has long been sloppy. Old enough to be in his second childhood (though such is far from the case), Gustaf V does have the eccentricity of leaving valuable royal orders lying about his palaces with the abandon of a moppet tired of its toys. Awaiting royal audience, a distinguished visitor was lately amazed to observe half a dozen valuable orders of various nations strewn haphazard about the antechamber. Mused His Majesty, as the audience began in a room hung with scores of silver platters, crammed with hundreds of silver bowls and tankards: "This is the Silver Room."

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