Watch Goga

That Rumania, ruled by a King who is a Hohenzollern, should ever since the War have been pro-French, has long been a mystery in which the chief political magician looked like a tall, ungainly Mongol with high cheek bones who answered to the name of Nicholas Titulescu.

Time & again a curt long distance call from the French Cabinet to the Rumanian Cabinet has blocked the dismissal of M. Titulescu as Rumanian Foreign Minister or forced his reinstatement. This, however, could go on only so long as Paris had loans and worthwhile favors to offer Bucharest, for the Rumanian people and their politicians, not to mention King Carol II, are frankly mercenary. Their last public love feast with France was at the time Rumania was visited with a splurge of lavish rewards by aged but scholarly and high-spirited French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou. This twinkling-eyed oldster returned from the Balkans only to be shot dead along with Yugoslav's King Alexander a few days later at Marseille (TIME, Oct. 15 & 29, 1934).

Those fatal bullets, Frenchmen have always believed, were paid for from Berlin, and last week to Frenchmen it came as the conclusion of a logical sequence that Nicholas Titulescu was finally dropped as Foreign Minister of Rumania as he lay sick on the French Riviera. Sick too was the erstwhile predominance of Paris at Bucharest and in the Rumanian capital a new star had shot up with a Nazi sizzle, Dr. Octavian Goga.

As long ago as 1934 M. Goga was said in Bucharest to have the backing of Benito Mussolini and informed rumor now equips hirr also with the backing of Adolf Hitler. He stands for a Rumania lukewarm to France and ardently Fascist. Few weeks ago he was received by Der Fuehrer, hurried from Germany to the Royal Palace in Bucharest with a "personal message" from Herr Hitler to Carol of Hohenzollern. Few days afterward Rumanian Premier George Tatarescu "reconstructed"' his Cabinet to leave out Titulescu. No European statesman doubted last week that this marked a great shift in the Continent's balance of power, a drawing of Rumania away from France and a tendency toward reorientation of the Little Entente (Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Yugoslavia) nearer to Germany as the prestige of "Aryan" Hitler waxes and that of Jew Blum is in doubt even at Paris.

It is not customary in Rumania to tell the truth publicly about matters of high policy and everyone gave new Rumanian Foreign Minister Victor Antonescu full credit for lying like a diplomat when he announced: "I retain complete confidence in the statesmanship of France, and I intend to retain cultural relations with Rus-sia." It would surprise no Rumanian if King Carol should break off with Joseph Stalin the diplomatic relations established between Russia and Rumania by M. Titulescu. With Nazi influence mounting at Bucharest the Jewish mistress of the King, red-haired Magda Lupescu, found her position last week greatly altered for the worse. His Majesty still looks to her for a certain amount of mothering when he is tired or nervous, but King Carol's infatuation has ended.

Not yet ready to enter the Cabinet, ominous Goga this week still held the title Leader of the Rumanian Nazis.

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