May it Please Paris!

Rumania has learned to sit up and do tricks when France cracks her whip, usually by offering or withholding a loan. Last week Bucharest's whole political setup was knocked down and rebuilt to please Paris.

First the Cabinet of Premier Alexander Vaida-Voevod resigned. Next smart Dr. Juliu Maniu, onetime peasant, now a lawyer and Peasant Party leader, buried the hatchet of his two-year-old quarrel with King Carol, kissed His Majesty's hand and was gazetted Premier.

In building his Cabinet Premier Maniu was able to include Rumania's other strong man and No. 1 diplomat, Nicholas Titulescu. He, up to last week, had waged guerrilla warfare against the French desire that Rumania join with France and Poland in signing non-aggression pacts with Soviet Russia.

Overnight Diplomat Titulescu abandoned his seemingly deathless hostility to a pact with Reds. Dr. Maniu was able to announce that the Rumanian Foreign Office (by which he meant M. Titulescu) will now "enter into friendly relations with the Soviet Union."

The French aim is to draw Russia out of her former close friendship with Germany, a maneuver made possible by the fact that the Reich now has a "Cabinet of Monocles," extreme reactionaries who are anathema to Communists. France, though no real friend of Russia, hopes to stimulate her trade with the Soviet Union, especially in view of London's trade rebuff to Moscow last week (see p. 15) and at all costs France wants to isolate Germany from Soviet military aid.

At Sinaia Palace, where the new Rumanian Cabinet received their seals and swore fealty to King Carol last week, Premier Maniu seemed to end his personal feud with the scapegrace monarch in these ringing words: "We will work to consolidate the Throne! We will erect a protecting wall about it."

As Crown Prince Mihai's eleventh birthday approached last week, his mother Princess Helen (who is estranged from King Carol and lives in London) traveled to Rumania. At the frontier she was met by the Rumanian Train and brought secretly to a suburban royal villa without entering Bucharest. Possibly Dr. Maniu, always a stanch champion of Princess Helen, will manage to patch things up. When he broke with the King two years ago Citizen Maniu reputedly said: "Sire, you can never be crowned unless the mother of Prince Mihai is crowned as Queen by your side!"

Up to now Carol has not been crowned. Officially Mihai's mother bears the title "Majesty" implying that she is Queen, but she is called Princess Helen.

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