BELGIUM: Heir of Italy

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Both are young, personable, Roman Catholic. Many an inspired despatch has linked their names, praised her 'cello playing, his dexterity at the wheel of a roaring motor, her welfare work among Belgian babies, his dashing career as an Italian colonel. She met him first in Rome when she was only eleven, while spike-helmeted Germans were trampling her own Brussels. Last week he came with a suite of 31 Italian nobles to seek her hand. Only a bullet was needed to make completely romantic the engagement, officially proclaimed at Brussels, of Marie Jose, third child and only daughter of Belgium's beloved King Albert, and the Prince of Piedmont, Umberto, Crown Prince of Italy.

Crowds massed at the tomb of Belgium's Unknown Soldier on the day the engagement was officially proclaimed last week. It was 9:30 in the morning, and the anniversary of the marriage of the present King and Queen of Italy in 1896. Gendarmes in khaki overcoats, their steel trench helmets painted white, formed a guard of honor. Cinema operators, sound and silent, stood by their tripods, then threw away their cigarets as a gleaming Minerva, private automobile of King Albert of Belgium, drew up at the curb.

Gendarmes saluted. Out stepped His Royal Highness Umberto Nicola Tommaso Giovanni Maria, Prince of Piedmont, his sleek hair shining like patent leather, medals gleaming, a pale blue sash across the front of his grey-green silver epauletted uniform. A band struck up the Italian royal hymn.

Suddenly a young man in pale grey knickerbockers, his own face even paler, darted through the police cordon, pointed a nickel revolver at Prince Umberto, fired, then tripped over a trolley track as he fired again. Instantly Brussels' famed War-time hero, Burgomaster Max sprang in front of H. R. H. to shield him. The royal chauffeur beat down the assassin's arm. A policeman struck him swiftly with his sword.

"A mort! A mort! Death! Death!" screamed excited Belgians, ripe for a lynching. Soldiers with fixed bayonets hustled the would-be assassin away. Prince Umberto, without turning round continued the ceremony, laid a laurel wreath bound with the arms of Savoy on the Unknown Soldier's grave, then insisted on reviewing the guard of honor.

"It was nothing, nothing at all," said Prince Umberto. "May the Princess not hear about it!"

"Alas, Your Royal Highness," replied a Belgian attaché, "I am afraid she will have already heard the news."

She had. Just as he stepped from his car at the door of the Italian embassy another car drew up, bearing King Albert and Princess Marie José. The blonde Princess, sobbing wildly, rushed forward and kissed her fiance passionately, to the huge delight of the Belgian populace.