The Bitter King

"Now the way to solve this problem," said the bartender, "would be for the King to abdicate and let his son Baudouin come back and be King. We hear young Baudouin isn't too bright, but who the hell wants a bright King? Only it looks as if it isn't going to happen because our King is a stubborn, bitter man."

This discourse took place in "Le Pot," a little cafee down by the canals in Brussels. Stroking his handlebar mustache, the bartender explained how the King became bitter. "There Leopold was--a young, handsome, dashing fellow anxious to make a splash in the world the way the Prince of Wales was doing over in England. What happened? His father was Albert, le roi chevalier, and his popularity put the boy completely in the shade. Then Leopold got married, and his bride turned out to be Astrid, one of the prettiest princesses you ever saw. She used to wheel her babies right through the park, sit down with the other mothers and talk diapers and formulas. She got so popular that the prince was in the shade again. Then his father was killed climbing a mountain, and right after that Astrid was killed in an automobile accident while he was driving. And then, by God, Leopold bet on the Germans!"

&qout;Fruits & Flowers." Not only in Le Pot but all over Belgium, people were excitedly thrashing out the question of whether the King--tall, blond Leopold-Philippe -Charles -Albert -Meinrad -Huber-tus-Marie-Miguel of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, otherwise known as Leopold III--should come back from exile to resume the throne. It is the overriding issue in the June 26 elections, and by last week the campaign was hot and ferocious. The Christian Social Party (Catholic) favored Leopold's return. The Socialists and Communists were against it. Labor threatened a general strike if Leopold returned.

The Flemings of the North were generally for Leopold. Leopold's darkly luscious second wife, Mary Liliane Baels (age 36), whom he married in the grim summer of 1941, is a Fleming. She was once known as &qout;The Shrimp Queen," because her father had made a lot of money in shrimp. In Northern villages, alongside pictures of Leopold inscribed "We await our King's return," there were on display posters of bosomy Mary Liliane in a low-cut evening dress, bending over a banquet table strewn with blossoms. The caption said simply: "Fruits and Flowers."

Tea & Poison. Day after day the Socialist Le Peuple lit into Leopold. The paper recalled that in November 1940, while a "captive" in his castle, Leopold had run down to Berchtesgaden for tea with Hitler.

Many middle-of-the-road Belgians, unimpressed by Le Peuple's poisonous campaign, nevertheless suspected that Leopold, a man of considerable intelligence and ability, was a natural autocrat who would never be comfortable within the limits of a constitutional monarchy. In 1940, two weeks after the Germans invaded Belgium, he had refused the pleas of the Belgian cabinet to leave the country and form a government-in-exile in London. In 1944, the Nazis took him to Germany; he was liberated there by the Allies and went to Switzerland. The Brussels Parliament installed his brother Charles as Regent and advised Leopold not to come back. Last week Charles was signing documents which began: "I, Charles, Regent of Belgium because the King is unable to function due to enemy action . . ." Unhampered by enemy action, Leopold was in Paris for a few days of tournament golf.

Leopold is extremely eager to become again the King of the Belgians in fact as well as in name. He recently sent his and Astrid's daughter Charlotte on a triumphant tour of the country. Everywhere Charlotte was cheered wildly. But, said anti-Leopoldists, they cheered because they liked Charlotte and because she was Astrid's daughter, not because she was Leopold's.

"The King Is Useless." A complicating factor is Leopold's Bavarian-born, 72-year-old mother, Elisabeth, widow of the revered Albert and heroine of World War I. She has a habit of popping up in Brussels to dedicate Communist art exhibits, and was recently listed as one of the sponsors of the Communist "peace" rally in Paris.

Left-wingers who do not dislike the monarchy dislike Leopold. Socialist Leader Max Buset growled last week: "This king has made himself useless. We have a monarchy in Belgium because we wanted to remove the Flemish-Walloon question from politics. This king, whether he willed it or not, has become a Fleming. His presence here would destroy the purpose of the monarchy."

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