"Anne & I"

As a shy young man entered a lounge of London's Claridge's Hotel, the hastily assembled gathering of U.S., British and Rumanian newsmen shifted uncertainly in their seats. At last one or two of them heaved to their feet. The others followed suit. Gravely and with some embarrassment King Michael of Rumania bowed, then quietly, and in good English, read his statement: "This act [abdication] was imposed upon me by force by a government installed and maintained in power by a foreign country, a government utterly unrepresentative of the will of the Rumanian people.... I do not consider myself bound by it in any way."

"It seems rather peculiar," a Rumanian Communist official murmured suavely in Bucharest, "that it took the ex-King two months to make up his mind that his hand had been forced." Michael's difficulty, however, had not lain in making up his mind, but in finding an opportunity to speak it. He had been negotiating with the Communists for the salvage of some of his Rumanian properties.

Shortly after his appearance at Claridge's, Michael was aboard the Queen Elizabeth, en route to New York. Before sailing he committed himself on another question. "Anne and I," said Michael, "hope to be married soon in Denmark." But even that plan presented complications. By week's end there was bad news for the hopeful young king and his Bourbon princess, who was staying with her mother in Paris. From Rome, Papal Secretary Eugene Cardinal Tisserant, the Vatican's expert on Soviet-dominated Europe, announced that Pope Pius had refused Roman Catholic Princess Anne permission to marry her Orthodox king unless both agreed to raise all their children as Roman Catholics.

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