BELGIUM: Heir of Italy

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.

Meanwhile in Brussels’ central police station detectives were learning things from the unsuccessful assassin. Speaking with difficulty through a broken jaw which he had acquired en route, the young man said that his name was Fernando di Rosa originally of Milan, Italy. An avowed antiFascist, di Rosa escaped from Italy over a year ago, crossing the French frontier on skis at night. In Paris he studied law at the Sorbonne, only leaving his little room in the Latin Quarter, to attend meetings of the Matteoti Club, a minor anti-Fascist secret society. It was at a meeting of this club that di Rosa won the honor of being delegated to shoot Prince Umberto.

“And I’m sorry I missed him,” said he to the attentive detectives. “I was unable to fire again because my pistol jammed.”

Observers were mildly amazed that any group of antiFascists could have grown so bumble-headed as to plot the assassination of Crown Prince Umberto as a blow against Fascism. For years it has been rumored that H. R. H. is the member of the Italian Royal Family most estranged from Dictator Mussolini. Most antiFascists regard the Crown Prince’s name as the best one around which to rally a revolution which should “deliver” Italy, yet preserve the Throne. Commonly in antiFascist circles the tale is told that H. R. H. once sent II Duce a challenge to duel.

Officially of course the Fascist Party cherishes Prince Umberto no less than his docile sire, King Vittorio Emanuele. In

Rome news of the attempted assassination brought Royalist and Fascist crowds surging to the gates of Italy’s Royal Palace, and to the office of II Duce, who appeared upon a balcony, flag in hand, and gave what Fascist newspapers described as “a personal demonstration of rejoicing and loyalty.”

So high grew Fascist tension that on Prince Umberto’s return to Italy he felt obliged to respond to cheering with the Fascist salute. Previously H. R. H., like other young Royalist officers, has used the military salute. Standing on a balcony of the Royal Palace in Milan, while a Fascist mob made pandemonium below, the Heir of Italy for the first time raised his right arm stiff-elbowed and with palm extended, aped II Duce.

“It is useless,” thundered Prime Minister Mussolini, celebrating on the morrow the seventh anniversary of the march on Rome, “and it may be even dangerous to attempt to disturb this divine harmony which runs from the King and from the heir to the Throne to the last peasant in our humblest village.”