AUSTRIA: Two Kings

Into Vienna pulled one day last week the private train of Turkish Dictator Mustafa Kamal Atatiirk and from it alighted the cruise party of Britain’s King Edward who left the chartered royal yacht Nahlin at Istanbul (TIME, Sept. 14).

A motor car from Buckingham Palace was at the Vienna station and slipping behind its wheel the King drove Mrs. Simpson to their favorite Bristol Hotel, at which they stopped a year ago when he was Prince of Wales. After lunch His Majesty went to a public bath with his chauffeur and six detectives, booked his own ticket at the wicket. Handing this to an Austrian bathwoman who did not recognize him, the King was scrubbed and, with his chauffeur and detectives all in a state of nature, walked about the vapor room where His Majesty was recognized by goggle-eyed Austrian bathers.

An official round of duty took King Edward VIII to the British Indian pavilion at the Vienna Fair, to President Wilhelm Miklas of Austria and to Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg. He went nightly to the State Opera or ballet with Mrs. Simpson and daily with Mrs. Simpson to the office of Herr Professor Doktor Heinrich Neumann who last year treated the Prince of Wales for inflammation of the middle ear, this year took X-rays of King Edward’s ears, treated them for the after-effects of a cold. The local British Legation issued twittery communiques which tended to alarm public opinion in Great Britain by assiduously insisting that nothing was the matter and that Dr. Neumann “found the King’s ears in the same excellent condition as last year.” Sensible Mrs. Simpson took the King out to buy warmer clothing lest he catch cold on a picnic shooting trip last week for partridges, of which His Majesty shot twelve.

Hitherto the fatherly New York Times has been chary about reporting Mrs. Simpson but last week she graduated to full Times coverage of her movements. These were snipped in Britain last week from the current issue of TIME, prompting the New York World-Telegram to cartoon and say: “The story was not scandalous. The censorship must have proceeded from some officious and oversensitive minor official while His Majesty was gone, for there was nothing in the story to offend the King.”

Pointedly left behind in Buckingham Palace by King Edward when he went on vacation was the official Private Secretary whom Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin successfully pressed His Majesty to accept. Major Alexander Hardinge. The London weekly Great Britain and the East recently identified Major Hardinge as the official who never tires of advocating greater dignity in His Majesty’s affairs and is tortured by informal reporting of Edward VIII in either British or U. S. publications. With the King on holiday is his actual private secretary, Sir Godfrey Thomas, who for 15 years was his official Private Secretary when Edward was Prince of Wales. Arrested and fined for speeding near London fortnight ago, Hardinge said to the constable with dignity: “I have done worse things than this, and I have no doubt you have too.” To devoted Hardinge, the King has a perfection similar to that of the Edward VIII made of 80-lb. of marzipan on view at the Confectioners and Bakers Exhibition in Royal Agricultural Hall.

In Vienna flesh & blood Edward VIII meanwhile last week fooled correspondents who had dusted off and cabled the old story of how he diets on greens-fish-fruit to keep thin. Mostly His Majesty is a light eater but the very day this story appeared in the U. S. he lunched with Baron Eugene Rothschild at Schloss Enzesfeld, ate heartily of lobster with mayonnaise, beefsteak with vegetables and appel-strudel. Before leaving Vienna for London the King gave stickpins and cufflinks to the hotel manager, a gold cigaret case to his doctor.

The other King in Austria last week was Leopold III of the Belgians. Walking down to a small village from his mountain vacation hut, His Majesty bought a frugal supply of food, returned on foot up the mountain. Since Belgium’s beloved King Albert died of a fall while mountain climbing (TIME, Feb. 26, 1934), and since young King Leopold, tragically bereaved of his wife (TIME, Sept. 9, 1935), grieves unconsolably, the Belgian public was seriously worried by the solitary climbing of Leopold III.