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THE CRISIS IN ROUMANIA.

THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF THE EX- CROWN PRINCE.

BUDAPEST.— I have glimpsed behind the hitherto impenetrable veil shrouding the secret history of the Roumanian dy- nastic crisis. Sinister possibilities of bloodshed and revolution shadow the  

former comic opera ''mise-en-scene." No longer merely a romantic, picturesque, "merry widow" type of royal domestic squabble, the scene revealed to me to-day is one of more ominous portent (writes Lady Drummond Hay in The Sphere). Flames of party hatred, national resent- ment, creep close around a dying King; the Queen, "a mother with a dagger in her heart," counselling privily, with Aver- escu, the astute Prime Minister, and Bratianu, often called the 'Black Man of Roumania;" a youthful, impetuous Crown Prince playing cup and ball with love and a throne; grim representatives of Rou- mania's wild, unlettered peasantry threatening revolution to secure the re- turn of banished Prince Charming. King Ferdinand, Queen Marie, Premier Averescu, ex-Prime Minister Bratianu, Crown Prince Carol, and his devoted band of supporters, play to the footlights in the marionette theatre of the Balkans; as spectators from the wings, three women with impassioned passivity follow the comedy, fast approaching tragedy, listening for their call; two little children await their roles, and through the shadows of the background glint the swords, bayonets, and rifles of an army "standing to." The King is dying; the Queen is plot- ting; Averescu and Bratianu whisper words of honeyed poison into the ears of their proud, wounded royal mistress; Bucharest is full of troops, frantic couriers hurtling between tbe semi-Oriental capital of Roumania and Paris, the capital of all pleasures, link up illusion and the real glory and love, according to romantic Carol, but love the illusion and glory the real, according to Prince Carol's ambitious mother. This is the picture presented by a Roumanian Court gentleman recently ar- rived from Bucharest. It seemed to me, somehow, that Prince Carol is not losing in the imagination of his people. Fan- tastic rumour wreathes him in the glamour of a dare-devil, as well as a sheikh. That he may attempt to kidnap his own little son, thus deperive Roumania of its childish Crown Prince, was affirmed to me quite seriously. "As the father he has the       right . . ." was all the comment I could draw.     Whatever the truth or otherwise of this supposition, the fact remains that Prin- cess Helena was accompanied all during her

absence from Roumania by a detective inspector of the Roumanian State Segu- rantza, who never let the five-year-old Crown Prince Mihail far from his sight.   Drifting Towards a Revolution.     Dramatic action, sensational develop- ments render even the bare facts of this royal drama more absorbing than a novel. The Roumanian dynastic crisis, brewing   since January of last year, when Crown   Prince Carol renounced the throne and   crown for love of Titian-tressed Magda Lupescu, divorced wife of a major in the Roumanian army, is daily becoming more acute, and now threatens a bloody climax. The movemnet of troops in Transylva nia concentration of troops in and around Bucharest, and intense activity of the   Segurantza, the State secret police, as re- ported here through diplomatic and other confidential channels, would seem to indi- cate that the Averescu Government real- ises that the country is drifting torwards a dangerous denouement.     "Romania is drifting rapidly towards     revolution, acording to our information,"   a very high Hungarian official told me. "The Republic is on the march in Rou-   mania," declared a prominent Roumanian member of the Nationalist Peasant Party passing through Budapest. How for the wish is father to the thought with both these men, each more or less wishing for and interested, in, the developments they separately predicted, is impossible for me to say. The drastic censorship in Bucha- rest has been tightened in the last few days. Even some, of the speeches in Par- liament dealing with the succession to the throne may not be printed in the news papers under pain of confiscation. All uncensored letters reaching Budapest through diplomatic channels, or by private couriers, emphasise the growing gravity of the situation in Roumania.   "Sensational Events.'' Sensational events are preparing, and   already even transpiring behind the cur-   tain of censorship and the Government's   gagging of the press. It is the tragedy of a dynasty, and of a royal throne, with touches of comedy, even farce, full of plots and intrigues, thoroughly Balkan-   esque in character, at first gaily romantic, now perilously grave. Crown Prince Carol eloped with Zizi Lambrino, daughter of a Roumanian major, when Field-Marshal von Mackensen and his German troops held Bucharest. They were married in Odessa, but soon after their return were separated by order of the King. The frustrated royal lover retaliated by announcing that he would be- come a Socialist, but was diverted from the plan. Subsequently, under great pres- sure from King Ferdinand and Queen Marie, he finally consented to a divorce, accepting consolation at the hands of his mother in the form of Princes Helena of Greece, while Zizi Lambrino and her little boy Carol were sent to Paris. They may never return to Roumania. Carol's happiness with his princessly Helena was of short duration. In December     1926, he left Bucharest with Madame   Lupescu, and after an exchange of letters with his father, the King, he refused to return, and renounced the throne. Mihail, Carol's five-year-old son by Helena, was named successor to his father as heir to the throne. Since then events have been moving rap- idly. Friends of Carol are becoming more and more active. Last week the National Peasant Party introduced a resolution in Parliament demanding convocation of the Crown Council again to take up the ques- tion of the succession to the throne. The executive committee of the party had pre- viously, on the night of February 1, held a meeting to decide how to force the issue of Carol's return before the public. M. Maniu, head of the National Peasant Par- ty, and M. Mihalache another leader of the party, it was afterwards gossiped in the lobbies of the Parliament were willing to let it come to revolution to make possible the return of Prince Carol. On February 3 Deputy Mihail Popovici, personal friend of Carol, who had been to Paris to confer with the ex-Crown Prince, was excluded from Parliament for 10 days. He had attempted to defend Carol, expressed his conviction in Carol's loyalty, denounced the intrigues against the former Crown Prince, and declared that, his party would do everything pos- sible to bring him back. The Government parties made such an uproar and tumult that only a little of his speech could be heard. As Popovici sat down, he turned to the Government parties and shouted, "You will lick his boots yet." Premier Averescu, speaking in Parlia- ment, demanded that the National Peas- ant Party immediately cease all agitation for Carol's' return, since it would only   have the effect of dividing the country into two big camps, and that the "camp of law and order" would be so much larger than the other that it would crush the followers of Carol. This was very much doubted in the lobbies of the chamber afterwards. The intensity of the struggle around the Roumanian Throne was slightly reflected by the Prime Minister in his speech. It

appears that Deputy Popovici, coming from Carol in Paris, went to Queen Marie and made an appeal for her son. Averescu said, "Gentlemen, I regret that this question has been thrown in the Par- liament, but now some light must be given to it. What has happened? A direct demarche was made to the King, but carried out with such naivee that I cannot but marvel how such an idea could be borne in the brain of the man who had conceived the idea. The would-be media- tor went to a mother, who has a dagger in her heart, only to turn the knife again in the wound. And this man went to the Queen in the belief that in this way the King could be influenced, as if the   King did not have his own will, and was subject to the influence of some one else!' The Queen is the factor in the opposi- tion to Carol's return. Deputy Popovici, according to statements coming from mem- berg of the National Peasant Party, re- ported to his party that Queen Marie had told him that ex-Premier Bratianu— often called the 'Black Man of Roumania' —and Prime Minister Averescu were op- posed to Carol's return, and that when he told the Queen that the National Peasant Party would agitate publicly for the return of Carol, the Queen wished him luck!   The full report of all this has been made to Carol in Paris, couriers coming and   going between the Roumanian capital and Paris.   Out of Roumanian parliamentary circles I have it that Carol's attitude is now be coming aggressive and active, that he main- tains he never renounced the throne volun- tarily, that he declared to Popovici that his forced renunciation as heir to the throne was illegal, and due to a false in- terpretation of his letter, that in these letters he had criticised and expressed his disapproval of things that were trans- piring in the Royal Court, but that he had never stated in them his desire or willingness to renounce the throne. Reconciliation Failed.   Recent attempted reconciliation between Prince Carol and his wife, Princess Helena, has failed. The Crown Princess Helena, with her five-year-old son, Mihail, the legal successor to his father to the throne, re- turned to Bucharest from Italy on Tuesday, February 8. Notwith- standing all denials, I learn from sources in a position to know that she left Bucharest for Florence and Rapallo by permission of the King and in the hopes of a reconciliation with Carol. She went as far as Rome, where Mus- solini and the Italian royal family offered their mediation between her and her hus- band on one side, and between Prince Carol and his father, the King, and Queen Marie, on the other side. But Bucharest gave Rome to understand that this inter- vention was not welcome. The King, it is understood, telegraphed Helena to re- turn to Bucharest as quickly as possible. There were rumours and reports in     Bucharest that Carol might attempt to kidnap his son. The whole Roumanian situation has been given a new turn, and the Averescu Government is making all military and police preparations to cope with a coupe d'etat by the Nationalist Party of Tran- sylvania and the Roumanian Peasant Party. Dramatic events are expected from day to day in Bucharest; the air is heavy with foreboding; my friends tell me that almost anything can happen there, and the world not know it until after wards, so rigid, so strict is the censorship over telegraph, telephone, and letters.

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