RUMANIA: Crackdown

Jews rejoiced last week as King Carol II cracked down with all his royal might on the anti-Semitic Iron Guard. In particular His Majesty’s titian-haired Jewish Pompadour, Mme Magda Lupescu, who had to flee Rumania when anti-Semitism recently burst out, was highly delighted. She was expected soon to return to Bucharest. Meanwhile the King’s forces worked day & night last week, arresting anti-Semites and piling them into Rumanian jails. They were accused of being “anti-Rumanian,” and Carol II let it be known that the probable form of Government in Rumania for the immediate future is Military Dictatorship.

Against this is the National Peasant Party of idealistic Professor Juliu Maniu. One of his leading associates, Charles A. Davila, who was Rumanian Minister to the U. S. for eight years ending last December, burst out last week in Manhattan. Mr. Davila accused the present Rumanian Premier, the Orthodox Patriarch Miron Cristea, of being at heart just as anti-Semitic as the squelched Iron Guard, with the only difference that he consents to act as puppet for Carol II. The National Peasant Party, Mr. Davila declared, is “backed by the overwhelming majority of the people against the Court camarilla and the King’s personal dictatorship!”

Because the largest Bucharest hotel, Athenée Palace, has been the political headquarters of the National Peasant Party, it has now been ordered closed by Dictator Carol “for ten years.” That the Orthodox Patriarch & Premier is little more than a stooge for His Majesty was evident when it was found that the King’s men had arrested, among 1,500 suspects of various sorts, 200 Orthodox priests.