RUMANIA: Dynasty Restored

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Sleazy Bucharest, the "Paris of the Balkans,"* and all sprawling Rumania were agog. After three years in eclipse, the great political Dynasty of Bratianu—the makers of Rumania—were again ascendant last week over Rumania's Royal House of Hohenzollern. Buck-toothed King Carol, who has tried to play the Dictator, was forced to accept a new Cabinet chosen not by himself, as his National Peasant Party Cabinets have been, but by the National Liberal Party of the Dynasty of Bratianu.

Rumania, once a mere princedom attached to the Sultanate of Turkey, won independence and the rank of Kingdom under her first Bratianu Premier, famed Ion (John) the Great in 1881. His son, also Ion and also great, saw the Rumanian House of Hohenzollern safely through the War, which brought the nation huge new territories. He induced flamboyant Queen Marie's quiet husband (whose name, already forgotten, was Ferdinand) to exact the abdication of Crown Prince Carol. When King Ferdinand died and Carol's son Mihai became Rumania's "Boy King" (TIME, Aug. 1, 1927), Rumanians said "It is now Ion who reigns and rules," but later that same year grizzled, astute old Ion Bratianu died, leaving the Premiership to his brother Vintila.

Followed the famed "March on Bucharest" of 60,000 unarmed, peaceful peasants who squatted, sprawled and slept all over the muddy streets of the capital in protest against the Dynasty of Bratianu. Finally Vintila, far less able and astute than Ion, was forced to resign. Advised by Rumania's three Regents, Boy King Mihai appointed as Premier the National Peasant Party leader, chipper little Professor luliu Maniu, who arrived at the Royal Palace with his new Cabinet list scribbled on a crumpled bit of paper, exclaiming "Here it is!" (TIME, Nov. 19, 1928).

Two years later the Dynasty of Bratianu seemed definitely down & out when scapegrace Carol (whom Ion had forced to abdicate) returned amid delirious triumph to Bucharest, thrust aside his own son, Boy King Mihai, and became King Carol II by an act of the Rumanian Parliament against which trembling old Vintila Bratianu alone had the courage to vote "No!" The rest of the Bratianu National Liberal Party abstained from voting and broken-hearted Vintila died later of apoplexy. King Carol ousted Mihai's mother, Queen Helen (now resident in England under the special favor and protection of George V), and brought to Bucharest his flaunting, red-haired Jewish mistress, Magda Lupescu, daughter of a junk dealer.