KINGS IN EXILE.

Evening Star, Issue 25701, 26 January 1946, Page 6

KINGS IN EXILE.

Not even many Americans probably would, argue to-day that crowned heads are the chief makers of wars; their role is more often to be victims of them. When the military star of Napoleon sank in defeat it was told how " kings crept out again to feel the sun "; to-day it is a question of how many of them will be able to creep back to their thrones. Mindful, perhaps, of his father's sins more than his own, the subjects of youthful King Peter of Yugoslavia have decided that they will Hot have him back, though it would be much to say they had tried him. King George of Greece, better known to his people, is in the same predicament, but the Greeks are fickle. They got rid of him before, and then changed their minds; among them republicanism and monarchy would seem to find preference almpst according to the season of the jear. The war was the direct cause of victor Emanuel of Italy being degraded to the position of a king requiring a regent, though he would probably have been retired before, with or without the approval of his subjects, if be had tried to thwart Mussolini. Albania has become a republic, with uo room for King Zog. : Queen Wilhelmina of Holland and King Haakon of Norway have resumed their thrones, as their merits deserved, amid popular acclamations, and King Christian of Denmark remains on his; he was restrained, but never subdued, by the German ojcupation. But 'King Leopold of Belgium has been reminded agajn this week that a majority of his subjects prefer him in Switzerland, which was his latest address. Their complaint is not against monarchy, but against Leopold as monarch; it was only incj eased by the war. Kings in Europe were fewer after the war of 1914-18. Now their numbers are reduced again. In the interval of so-called peace Spain became a republic,, and there are two untried aspirants to thrones who seem unlikely to make kingship an estate less lonely. Prince Juan of Spain hovers about the borders of his late father's realm; he has visitors, no doubt, who discuss services and favours; but Lisbon is the nearest that he has yet got to the Escurial. Prince Otto of Austria is in a still less hopeful case. He was brought up by an ultra-Conservative mother, and the Austrians run to Socialism. They show no disposition to exchange u president for his rule; the Allied Control Council wants no Habsburg in Vienna: and the throne of Hungary, vacant between wars Tinder a regency, though lie has equal claims to it seems as inaccessible. has just proclaimed iteelf a republic. Of all the not wanted Applicants for thrones Leopold's is the ••ase that has had most discussion; He was blamed unjustly for the surrender J of his forces to the Germans, which | was calamitous to the Allies' resistance

in the first days of the war. As the Belgian Prime Minister, M. Van Acker, has said, he did not betray his country. But he offended it deeply when he remained under German occupation, instead of following nis Government to London like Wilhelmina and Haakon. He otfonded it more by paying a visit to Hitler, in the interests of Belgium, no doubt, as he conceived them, but as much in the interests of the dynasty. He had offended it earlier by his second marriage with a commoner. To quote M. Van Adker, who seems to have dealt with his case fairly as possible in a speech which he made to the Belgian Assembly, he made " unpardonable errors." He believed in a German victory, A plebiscite will decide in a few weeks from now whether, King George is to return to Greece < - not. but all but one of the Belgian political parties have rejected a proposal for a like plebiscite to decide Leopold's fate, and the Premier has expressed he ui . priso of. the Cabinet that he hould persist in it. Another king must .be found for the Belgians.