Message at Marriage

Habsburg Archdukes crowded the aisles. Onetime King Alfonso of Spain and his venerable aunt the Infanta Eulalia were on hand as were the Wittelsbach Princes from Bavaria, the Princess Marie Pia of Orleans and a parcel of assorted Bourbons from every branch of that intricate family. Occasion was the marriage in Vienna last week of Infante Alphonse of Bourbon-Caserta, nephew of deposed Alfonso of Spain, to the Princess Alice of Bourbon-Parma, niece of deposed Empress Zita of Austria. Crowds gawked at the door of the church, admired the bride's silver lame gown, the brilliant uniforms of the guests. Almost unnoticed in another part of Vienna was another wedding guest, Britain's onetime Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain. The presence of this British elder statesman with his monocle screwed into his emaciated aristocratic face suggested bigger news than all the empty pageantry of defunct royalty.

Wisest Vienna gossips were all repeating the same story: Weeks of excited shouting that Adolf Hitler was preparing another armed coup in Austria had finally roused Great Britain. Sir Austen Chamberlain, accompanied by Lord & Lady Astor, was in Vienna officially on a vacation trip. To informed observers, however, it was heavily significant that the Bourbon wedding was the chance of a lifetime to confer with all Austria's leading royalists at once. Sir Austen was supposed to have brought word from London that as a last resort against a Nazi Putsch in Austria, Britain was ready to back the restoration of Pretender Otto to the Austrian Imperial Throne.

Every important Austrian statesman stayed in Vienna to interview Sir Austen last week. When four days after the wedding he jumped into a train for Prague, quidnuncs insisted it was to do his best to convince the suspicious Czechs that a Habsburg restoration in Austria would be less of a threat than Nazification to their country.

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