1964 OLYMPIC GAMES

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28906, 28 May 1959, Page 13

1964 OLYMPIC GAMES

Tokyo Chosen By Committee

(Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, May 26. The International Olympic Committee today selected Tokyo for the Olympic Games in 1964. • Mr Kiotaro Azuma, Governor of Toyko and Japanese delegate to the 1.0. C., said later that Japan —where the cancelled 1940 Games were to have been held—had made tremendous efforts to be able to stage them in Tokyo in 1964. He said: “The special importance of the Tokyo Olympic Games lies in their international significance. It is the first time in the long history of the Games that they are going to be held on Asian soil —and Asia is one of the continents represented by the five Olvjnnfr birrin': ”

The “Daily Mail” said that the Government bluntly told the former King to go because they thought he wielded too much influence over his 28-year-old bachelor son, King Baudouin. King Baudouin is at present in the United States and there was no immediate official reaction from the young King on the crisis in his capital. The crisis in the Belgian Royal house went back to 1940, when, to use Sir Winston Churchill’s words at the time, King Leopold “divided the nation and delivered it into Hitler’s protection.’’ '

British morning newspapers emphasised that the Royal House —which is a branch of the once powerful German princely dynasty of Saxe-Coburg had incurred much unpopularity because of Leopold’s second marriage to Princess de Rethy, by whom he has several children. The “News Chronicle” Brussels correspondent said critics of the Royal House were calling the King, “Baudquin the weak.’’ They said that nothing had been too trivial for the Palace group to use to humiliate the 9-million Belgians. When members of the Royal Family travelled abroad, they did not use Belgian airlines. They wore foreign-made clothes and engaged a foreign doctor. Whenever King Baudouin took part in official functions, he was glum and unsmiling.

The reason was that he could not forgive the people for voting out his father in the referendum in 1950.

Many of the Belgian people believed their young Monarch was

ruled by his father, whom about half the nation disliked, and his step-mother, who is unpopular in Belgium, the correspondent said Questions on Wedding Yesterday, the Socialist group in the Belgian Lower House announced after a Cabinet meeting that they would go ahead with plans to force a Parliamentary vote on the arrangements for the wedding of Prince-Albert, King Baudouin’s 25-y ear-old brother, to Princess Paolo Ruffo di Calabria at the Vatican on July 1. The Socialists would ask the Government why Prince Albert’s wedding was being held in the Vatican, and why no ceremony would be held in Belgium, British United Press reported. Under Belgian law, only the civil ceremony was binding on a marriage. In Italy, a Roman Catholic Church wedding was sufficient, British United Press said. But no change in the wedding plans was expected for fear of slighting the Pope, British United Press said. A civil wedding before the Vatican ceremony would imply a questioning ** the Pope’s authority.