Royalty Returns

A rumor spread wildfirewise through Rumania last week that King Ferdinand lay dead in his palace, but that the fact would be concealed until after the return of Queen Marie to Bucharest. From every major Capital, Rumanian diplomats protested indignantly that their Sovereign was alive.* Meanwhile the Rumanian Court Chamberlain, General Angelesco, sped to meet Queen Marie on her arrival at Cherbourg.

Aboard the Berengaria Queen Marie at first kept to her suite of staterooms, alleging mal de mer, though the crossing was anything but rough. Later she dined at the captain's table. Princess Ileana, clad in a grey one-piece bathing suit, swam several times in the ship's pool, accompanied by Prince Nicholas.

Meanwhile U. S. citizens mulled over the farewell address and parting shot of Queen Marie:

"Here I am, my face turned eastward and you [Americans] want to know what I think of you. . . . Most of you are hampered with no traditions, have inherited neither houses nor names. No ancestry makes you pause to wonder if it is dignified for you to do this or that, to be with this man or that. . . . You speak of freedom and democracy, and yet . . . there seems to me no privacy in your American lives. Everything everybody does is pried into. ... It is strange that you who are so busy living have time for this extraordinary interest in others. . . .

"It is the simple people in the street that I love and that love me! They love me for myself, not because I am a Queen. In your cities, everywhere that I went, to Seattle and Chicago and all of the little places that I can't even remember, they broke through the police lines to clasp my hand and tell me of their affection. It is them that I love and to them that I shall someday return. ... I cannot look into the future, and enough unto the day is the joy or the sorrow thereof."

*The death of King Edward VI (only son of Henry VIII of England) was concealed for two days, and the dead sovereign youth was actually propped up for a few hours at a window of his palace. The reason: "so that the people may see that he is still alive."