"Not Rabid"

Interviewed by Paris' Le Journal this week, new Rumanian Premier Octavian Goga announced: "We expect some Jewish citizens to remain in our country, but we wish to send out more than 500,000 of them who are without citizenship rights."

Meanwhile in a truculent interview with London's Laborite Daily Herald King Carol had declared: "The new Govern-ment in Rumania is my Government and it must have my approval. The day I am not satisfied with its conduct I will require a change."

His Majesty asserted that 250,000 Galician and Russian Jews who fled into Rumania after the War came "illegally" and are "not a good element." These "invaders" are not protected by the minorities treaties, continued King Carol. "About them we will consider what we must do. . . . We shall not be rabid. ... If we take certain measures [against these 250,000 Jews] which seem illogical to the British mind and are not in accordance with Civilization it should be borne in mind that our object is to save the remainder."

There are about 1,000,000 Jews in Rumania today, and last week the forehanded British Minister in Bucharest, Sir Reginald Hoare, suspecting what the Goga Cabinet was about to do, had called the attention of His Rumanian Majesty's Government, "in the friendliest manner," to the rights guaranteed to Jews and minorities under the Treaty of St. Germain. The French Minister followed with another limp protest, for both London and Paris knew that Bucharest was just on the verge of teaming up with Berlin, chucking Rumania's traditional alliance with France. The official German news service bellowed meanwhile: "In Rumania the Goga Government wishes only to expel Jews from State offices and call a halt to Jewish thievery. In Czechoslovakia, however, millions [of Germans] have been fully deprived of all rights. Did Britain ever find it necessary to remind the Czechoslovak Government of minority agreements? . . . The ruins of Arab houses in Palestine with the death sentences passed on Arab leaders merely fighting for their rights, as well as the suppression of the Boers, are examples that contradict sharply the British Government's present interest in the fate of the Rumanian Jews."

Most famed of all Jews who emigrated last week from Rumania was none other than King Carol's red-headed Magda Lupescu, who reached Vienna on her way to Nice. To her old friend and personal banker, Dragul Popescu, according to the London Daily Sketch, she confided:

"Many people consider M. Goga my enemy. Actually he is my friend, my very firm friend. Immediately when M. Goga came into power he talked to me earnestly, pleading that it would be better for everyone if for the moment I left Rumania. ... I found it difficult to make up my mind. Before I left Bucharest I had a long conversation with the King. In my house at Sinaia we talked the problem over again trying to make up our minds what was truly the best course. ... I have not forgotten that above all I am a great Rumanian patriot, and the interests of Rumania weigh with me more than any other consideration. I intend to settle down for a little while in Paris."

Not only Jewish, but Russian and Hungarian language papers were suppressed in Rumania last week, but the only anti-Semitic decree of the week was one published by Minister of Public Works George Cuza, son of the even more rabid Minister without Portfolio Alexander Cuza. This will make it an offense for Jews to employ non-Jewish female servants under 40 years of age.

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