RUMANIA: Take Him Away

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Aug. 23 would always be an important date in Rumania, no matter how the Communists tried to rewrite history. That day, three years ago, Hitler had 100,000 troops in Rumania and the country was in the grip of his closest foreign friend, Ion Antonescu.

On the Moldavian border, 180 miles northeast of Bucharest, Rumanian troops were exchanging shots with Russians. But suddenly the Rumanians turned their guns on the Germans, and Hitler's largely Rumanian-manned southern flank gave way to a Red Army romp. Behind the historic switch was an historic conversation—of the sort novelists spend agonized years trying to reconstruct. But this dialogue had been carefully recorded on a talking disc by a boyish, gadget-loving King, and seldom had the most imaginative of novelists equaled it. Last week, as Rumania celebrated the third anniversary of Aug. 23, TIME Correspondent Robert Low dug out the record, cabled:

A tall (6 ft. 3 in.), husky youngster, not quite 23 years old, paced the floor of his study in the Bucharest palace. Occasionally he stopped to finger the button which led to a concealed Dictaphone. His loose tweed jacket and baggy grey flannel trousers, his light colored eyes and curly brown hair, made him seem younger than he actually was. But he had made his first —and perhaps his last—big decision as King of Rumania. Now he was about to take the big gamble.

Finally came a long-awaited knock. Antonescu, elegant, overbearing in his uniform of self-appointed marshal and "conductor of Rumania," strode into the room. The young man pressed the Dictaphone button, and turned to face the visitor.

Antonescu: "Long live Your Majesty."

King Michael: "There is no time to lose. In spite of the representations I have made to you, you have brought the country to a situation from which only immediate cessation of hostilities and expulsion of the Germans can save it."

Antonescu: "You are mistaken."

King: "Please accustom yourself to addressing me correctly. What is this yoti?"

Antonescu: "You—Your Majesty—Your Majesty is nervous today."

King: "Yes, because when I called you this morning you treated me as a mere nothing [thumping the desk]. I do not permit you to take liberties with my person. Do you think I can permit you to usurp my prerogatives and simply look on like a fool while my country crumbles away?"

Antonescu: "And who is destroying it?"

King: "All of you. Yet when I call you, you have no time for the King of this country."

Antonescu: "I wish to tell you that you are mistaken if you think you can save the country by an armistice."

King: "I have not called you to ask your advice or for your opinion. The purpose for which I have called you is for you to transmit this telegram concerning the cessation of hostilities to the United Nations."

Antonescu: "Who composed it?"

King: "What does it matter to you? If you do not accept it, I shall send it myself."

Antonescu: "How can you imagine that the Marshal can betray his German allies and throw them into the arms of the Russians?"

King (shouting): "Who is doing the betraying, you or the Germans? Did you guarantee Germany's frontiers, or Germany Rumania's?"