Kings & Tsar

With her own hand, according to London dispatches last week, Queen Elizabeth adjusted the towels in a guest bathroom at Buckingham Palace and placed there a fresh cake of soap bearing the British royal arms. This was for the use of King Leopold III of the Belgians, whose state visit went off in glittering, uneventful style as scheduled (TIME, Nov. 22). At the last moment before the state ball there was substituted for the Royal Artillery Band, which even courtiers have called "lousy," swank Marshall's Orchestra. For the first time at Buckingham Palace the crowned heads danced at the same time as the 1,200 guests, whereas previously they have always danced first on a cleared floor, then seated themselves and watched their guests dance.

At the state banquet a toast which might have brought tears to the eyes of Queen Mary was proposed by King Leopold, responding to the toast in his honor by King George. "It is sad to recall," said Leopold III, raising his glass, "that I should, in 1935, have paid to His Majesty King George V and to your dear mother the visit which I pay to Your Majesty today. The sorrows that have befallen your family and mine, grievous as they are, have forged a further link of mutual sympathy and friendship between our royal houses and, through them, between our two peoples."

King Leopold closed by affirming that Belgium knows she will always find in Britain "that sure support which, joined to our own unshakable determination to defend ourselves, would successfully repel all danger from our soil!"

There was every reason to believe that the pomp of King Leopold's visit of state last week was its essence, whereas his informal visit to London last March was quietly devoted to the big business of setting up by treaty Belgium's present status as a neutral, protected in 1937 by British, French and German guarantees (TIME, April 5 et seq.). On quiet visits to London came last fortnight little Tsar Boris of Bulgaria and King George II of Greece.

The Tsar, whose wife is a daughter of the King of Italy, was reported to be looking personally into Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's new and most cordial relations with II Duce. London's leftist tipster sheet The Week had Greece's King George "afraid he has cancer. His mother Queen Sophie died of it. And before that her mother too. ... If the British doctors' opinion is unfavorable, then the King will abdicate in January." At dingy but swank Brown's Hotel, where George II was staying, Leopold III called and Their Majesties took tea.

Trying in Brussels, meanwhile, to form a Cabinet was Belgian Liberal Paul Emile Janson. He hustled over to London to tell Leopold III he had lined up the necessary majority, returned to Brussels accompanying His Majesty, discovered to his chagrin that the backing he thought he had obtained had slipped away. Thus Professor van Zeeland, who offered his resignation on Oct. 25, remained Premier of Belgium.

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