"God, King, and Nation"

Seldom in any country does a party receiving less than 10% of the votes cast in an election have its leader proclaimed Prime Minister. Exactly that happened last week in Rumania. Week after election (TIME, Jan. 3), King Carol, hurrying down to Bucharest from his country seat near Sinaia, summoned a ELungarian-born poet-politician and instructed him to form a ministry.

So badly beaten at the polls was King Carol's subservient Premier George Tatarescu that, even though-Rumanian law allows any Government that fills 40% of the seats in the lower chamber 75% of its voting power, he could not muster a majority. Last fortnight's elections showed that the three strongest parties in Rumania are: the National Liberal Party of beaten Tatarescu, the National Peasant Party of wild-eyed Julius Maniu, the Nazi-sup-ported Iron Guard of Zelea Codreanu. All three were objectionable last week: the National Liberal Party because they were damned as pro-French in a country where Nazi influence is increasing daily; the radical National Peasant Party because it offends King Carol; and the Fascist Iron Guard because it has frequently threatened the King's henna-haired Magda Lupescu with assassination.

King Carol skipped all these, therefore, to pick as Premier white-haired, sleepy-eyed Octavian Goga of the little National Christian Party. As a poet Octavian Goga's reputation rests largely on a series of translations of Hungarian epics. As a politician he won the awed admiration of Balkans by conducting the most slickly corrupt elections ever seen as Minister of the Interior in 1926. But Goga exactly suited King Carol because, although violently antiSemitic, he is a good friend of Jewess Lupescu; although a Fascist, a bitter enemy of Iron Guardsman Codreanu. In jig time last week he whipped a Cabinet together which contained three members of the National Peasant Party. These were promptly denounced as turncoats and Judases by Peasant Leader Maniu but remained silent on their dignity. Quickly Octavian Goga hustled the whole Cabinet to the palace to take the oath of office before their King. Said King Carol:

"After long consideration I have called on you to take office. You will follow a new path under the banner of nationalism. Your party principles, 'God, King, and Nation' must also be the principles of your Government."

Immediately after this oath Premier Goga drove his Cabinet to church, to take another, even more solemnly, before the high altar.

While Germany, Italy, France and Britain eagerly waited to see in what direction the Goga Government's foreign policy was going to swing, one of its internal policies was quickly made clear. Symptomatic was the offering of special prayers for Premier Goga's aged right-hand man, 81-year-old Minister Without Portfolio Professor Alexander Cuza. Professor Cuza was not only founder of a predecessor of the present National Christian Party but is a famed oldtime Fascist and a vigorous Jew-baiter. Disdaining the Nazi swastika, Fascist Cuza has used a blue swastika as his party symbol (since 1910). In short order terrified Rumanian Jews learned that:

P:The Lance Bearers, private army of the National Christian Party, will be increased from 1,000 to 200,000 men, distributed through all 71 Rumanian districts. Their leader, M. Robu, was last week made prefect of Czernowitz, city with the largest Jewish population in the country.

P:No Jew may live in a rural village, engage in the liquor business, operate a theatre or cinema, obtain in future a license to practice as architect, engineer or doctor, or work on a non-Jewish newspaper.

P:Goga's Goebbels will be Jew-baiting Minister of Propaganda M. Hodos and under him a M. Cucu will have charge of the radio.

In a telephone interview with the London Evening Standard, Premier Goga explained "We are not anti-Semitic in principle. . . . There are 1,500,000 Jews in Rumania in a population of over 18,000,000. Now I intend to clear them out and re-establish Rumanians in their jobs. I wish to deny that all Jewish civil servants are about to be dismissed. There are no Jewish civil servants in Rumania."

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