A ROYAL OUTING.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 13 August 1924, Page 8

A ROYAL OUTING.

EXPENSES IN TRIPPING ROUND EUROPE. The visit of King Ferdinand and Queen Marie to Pans and Loudon has cost the Government £130,000, states the Bucharest correspondent of the San Francisco Chronicle. An additional expense was £16,000 which the Government paid to Colonel Greble, a representative of the Baldwin Locomotive Works. By some chance, Colonel Greble had arranged to appear in the courts the day before the Royal departure from Bucharest and demand a sequestration order against 50 Baldwin locomotives on which the Government had suspended aIL payments for the last two years. As one of the principal objectives of the Royal visit was to sound out' London bankers on a loan to Roumania, the Government feared that; Colonel Greble’s suit would prejudice the prospects of tlie loan, arid astonished the American by presenting hint with £16,000 back interest’. It changed this, with other expenses', to the visit. , Colonel Greble, who is a former aide to President Taft, is preparing to sue the Government for £400,000, due to the Baldwin Locomotive Works, and to demand sequestration of his 50 engines. The expenses account of the Roumanian sovereigns’ two months’ • visit’ shows that the £130,000 was mainly spent on big dinners in Paris 'and London, hauling their special trains around Europe, and afternoon teas. The trip w'as a failure, because alt the ■<*?. London bankers refused to consider floating a loan to Roumania as long as the Government continues to repudiate its debts and confiscate foreign property.: As a result of the trip the King has decided to dismiss the* Bratiano Government and call the new; National Peasant Party into power. He hopes the new Government will secure Bolshevik recognition of the annexation of Bessarabia.