Nice for Nazis

If a snowball should refuse to melt in Hell, King Carol of Rumania would be no more surprised than he was last week by the results of Rumania's elections. Any Premier, no matter how unpopular, traditionally wins the election in Rumania if he has the support of the King. One reason for this is that the police always "work for the King's candidate" (four people were killed last week) and this factor alone has been found by experience to be worth 20% of the votes. If a Premier can then poll 20% more on his own popularity he is sure of a majority, for under Rumania's specially tailored electoral law any party winning 40% of the vote is automatically given 75% of the seats in the Lower Chamber.

Theory of this is that there are too many political parties in Rumania anyhow and endless bickering can be avoided only by giving whichever party is strong enough to win 40% unchallenged power. "Our system combines many of the best features of Democracy as well as Fascism," Rumanian courtiers are fond of purring. Last week they were aghast as King Carol's unpopular Premier George Tata-rescu's followers were found to have won only 38.5.% of the seats.

This meant that His Majesty, the King's mistress Mme Lupescu and the Premier had been vigorously repudiated by the whole Rumanian people. The Parliamentary Opposition has long denounced His Majesty's open flaunting in strongly anti-Semitic Rumania of a Jewish mistress notorious for selling political favors. But last week King Carol did not think of abdicating and Premier Tatarescu, although defeated, thought of a desperate measure by which he might yet win.

Although Tatarescu's followers had won only 38.5% of the Chamber seats, the Premier claimed they had won just over 40% of the popular vote, and that that sufficed. Next the Government suddenly announced that as yet there were no official returns. Everyone already knew, however, that the main feature of the poll, apart from Tatarescu's failure to win 40%, had been tremendous gains by the so-called Rumanian Nazis.

King Carol invited Premici Tatarescu to lunch at the Royal Palace. Abruptly the Electoral Commission announced that it did not approve of the proposal by His Majesty's Government to construe the returns so as to give itself 50%. Denounced by the Commission, the Premier wrote out and signed his resignation, left it with the King. In Court circles it was said that nothing would be done until after the New Year holidays, and by that time M. Tatarescu may conceivably have been able to line up support from other Rumanian parties for a coalition Cabinet. It was even possible that the Rumanian Nazis (who are said to shake down Mme Lupescu for such large sums--by threatening to assassinate her--that she has ironically been called their biggest backer) might team up in coalition with His Majesty's Government. In any case Rumanian election returns seemed to prove that the recent visit to Bucharest of French Foreign Minister Yvon Delbos has done nothing to weaken German Nazi influence in the Kingdom of Carol von Hohenzollern, nothing to strengthen Democracy in the Balkans.

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