Visiting Kings

Impeccably groomed journalists on the platform of Liverpool Street Station were mistaken for a reception committee of impeccably groomed British statesmen last week by arriving King Christian X of Denmark. After shaking hands with them, His Majesty noticed their notebooks and pencils, remarked easily, "I see you are writers. I'll give you no trouble and will be a good boy."

England's other visiting King, Leopold

III of the Belgians, continued to give Fleet Street last week the trouble of guessing why he was in London on his third visit this year (TIME, Dec. 13 et ante). A very old family friend, with whom young widower King Leopold and his widowed mother Queen Elisabeth had been staying in England, last week had his solicitors insert as a letter in the London Times the champion disclaimer of the year: "We are instructed by His Grace the Duke of Portland to publish this complete and unqualified denial of every suggestion that has been made in certain newspapers in connection with the visit of His Majesty the King of the Belgians and Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth, to Welbeck Abbey.

"There is no truth whatever to any rumors to which publicity his been given. They are silly and could have been ignored were it not that they might produce a mischievous effect."

Said the Duke of Portland's marriageable granddaughter, Lady Anne Cavendish-Bentinck, who was observed to be wearing nothing at all last week on the third finger of her left hand, "I am sorry, I can say nothing at all."

The Duke this week wrote an impassioned letter to the London Times, disclosing that two reporters had tried to climb into his house through a window to get a look at King Leopold, had sought to enter His Majesty's railway compartment, had rung up in "bad French" on the telephone. "To what depths," wrote the Duke of Portland, "have certain members of the press descended!"

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