Stalin & Marie

Citizens of Moscow gathered in little knots on the sidewalk near Bogoyavlenie Church, gaping in amazement last week as Orthodox dignitaries blandly celebrated a requiem high mass for the late Rumanian Dowager Queen Marie. This was accompanied by loud, priestly chanting clearly audible some distance from the church. So far as the press could learn, there has been no such honoring of royalty in Moscow since the Revolution --yet last-week the famed Communist Union of Militant Atheists took it lying down. The Secret Police kept hands off, evidently on instructions. In his youth, Joseph Stalin studied for the Orthodox priesthood, but that in 1938 priestly offices would be performed in the Soviet capital for a Queen of Orthodox Rumania--and such a Queen as orchidaceous Marie--is something few Reds ever expected.

At Bucharest last week, the lying in state of Her late Majesty was in the ornate Byzantine Hall of her Cotroceni Palace, the same hall in which, when giving audience to foreigners she was wont to exclaim as Queen, "I designed this hall. You have admired it, yes. Ah, but you should have seen it when my husband, King Ferdinand, was laid out there at the far end in Death--it was beautiful!" The ladies of the Court, by express command of the Dowager Queen, mourned her not in black but in a color she had described as violet Cardinal. While her body was laid last week beside that of King Ferdinand in the royal vault, her heart was cut out by her instructions, to be placed in a mauve-lined silver casket, enshrined in the chapel at Marie's beloved country Castle Balcic.

Since Her late Majesty was a second cousin of King-Emperor George VI, to the funeral came the Duke and Duchess of Kent. There was no question of the Queen's popularity, for Bucharest filled to overflowing with Rumanians from all over the country, many arriving from great distances. As Marie of Rumania passed to her last resting place, devout thousands groveled in prayer, made the sign of the cross.

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