A MAD BALKAN CITY.

Otautau Standard and Wallace County Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 395, 3 December 1912, Page 2

A MAD BALKAN CITY.

BUCHAREST REFUSES TO BE REFORMED. Mad Bucharest is wroth with mild Crown Prince Ferdinand Victor Albert Meinrad. Bucharest is happily, gloriously, bacchantically insane ; and unreasonable Ferdinand wants to make it J sane. Ferdinand is heir to the throne, nephew of childless King Carlos and of carolling Carmen Sylva. He has a handsome wife and a still handsomer daughter. He is rich, 47, and slightly asthmatic. He should therefore know better than to go about correcting this incorrigible world. But Ferdinand is an optimist, and wants tp reform Bucharest. That city is optimistic also, and declines to consider the grim cohtingency of reform. " I was mad," it chortles, "long before '86, when first ' Doctor ' Ferdinand arrived from his native Hohenzollern ; and I shall be mad,- please Heaven, long after he returns." — Wherein Madness Lies. — Bucharest's madness lies in an inordinate craze to be the smartest, wildest, bizarrest, flirtiest, gambly-cst of all Europe's reprobate cities. Compared with it, most towns are nests of Puritan boredom. All who want vice without charm, luxury without comfort, gambling without honesty, and splendor without soap rush Bucharestwards. They have a good time in Rumanian style. But it is not good enough for reforming Ferdinand, who says that since the other Balkan States are going mad — politically — it is time for Rumania to get sane. Rumania leers insanely. It has had' two record harvests, and a boom of factorybuilding, hotel-starting, speculation, swindling, enrichment, and ruin ; and it is in no mood for the sour-faced counsels of Savonarola Ferdinand. Bucharest's madness effloresces variously. First, in a hell-fire craze for gambling which has seized all Rumanians from princes to gipsies. Rightly, there are gipsies but no princes. Wise Rumania's law-givers forbade titles, but there, as in other democratic lands, people invent their own titles ; and there is no landowner, however hard up, who does not discover — at least when abroad — that he's a prince. The Rumanians have lately had their land rents doubled by the kindly Providence which ripens crops, and their idea of having a good time with it is to see it pass to swindlers. — The Gambling Craze. — All Rumanians gamble. Small boys gamble for used matches, and antique beggars gamble for their last grey hairs. Mad 1 Bucharest has 350,000 citizens and — so the ' Rumanul ' says — it has 680 gambling dens. About one for every 500 citizens ! Gambling goes on without ceasing, punctuated by murders and suicides, which no man takes notice of. Sometimes, however, things happen that even drag the police out of their own gambling dens. Lately the suicide of Lieutenant Luders ' (of German origin) led to a great kick-up. It was then that respectable Ferdinand got his first shock. He learned that not only Bucharest and Kustendji (which is Rumania's chief port) were thick with gambling hells, but that the royal borough, Sinaia, is thicker still. Sinaia is a small town at the foot of the high Carpathian mountains. It boasts the fine royal chateau of Pelesch and the Crown Prince's palace Pelischer; there are parks, walks, and hotels, and of late the landowners have taken to building villas there. It was short-sighted Ferdinand who set them building the villas ; and now he is sorry, for the villa-owners turned Sinaia into the biggest gambling centre of its size on earth. Ferdinand was so keen on developing Sinaia and on creating a Rumanian Versailles that he built villas himself. He dragged out of dusty Bucharest the half-Oriental magnates. They were to live in " European style " ; that means to wash, keep nice gardens, and wear silk hats. The magnates came to Sinaia and transformed it into a blossoming Monte Carlo. In the little town of 4,000 residents there are numberless secret and private hells, where baccarat, ecarte, rouge-et-noir, roulette, and some buccaneer Rumanian swindling games are played from morning to night. Prince Ferdinand has heard sad tales of his Sir.aia Versailles. A penniless officer who came suddenly into £47,000 gambled three-fourths of it away on an August night. Next day he had to join his regiment at Braila. He insisted on taking with him the gambler who had won his money, so that the game might be played out. Before the train reached Braila he lost everything. He died a day later. Only when his heir was presented with lOU's for £46,000 did society guess that he had died 1 by his own hand. Naturally there are protests. The Archbisliop-Prima of Rumania said: "Everyone gambles excessively. Many never work ; they live on gambling profits while they win, and when they lose they beg or swindle." A report issued by the Ministry of Domains shows that, of a group of 795 estates in little Wallachia, 175 changed hands in a year, and that in the last seven years 650 changed hands. One estate was sold nine times owing to its successive owners being ruined. Half the sales were forced by creditors or mortgagees. The same feverish change of propertj'-ownership goes on in Bucharest. A town house seldom remains in the same hands for five years. Its more usual fate is to be staked at a gambling orgy, during which vast quantities of raw Russian spirits (the latest Rumanian tipple) are drunk. Yet Bucharest is not a drunken city. It is too busy with other vices. — And the Ladies. — In its small way mad Bucharest rivals Europe's great cities. The fashionable Calea Victoriei, which runs north from the centre, shows fine automobiles, well-groomed fast trotters which excel Moscow's, and well-groomed fat gentlemen who rival Berlin's. The " birjari " put to shame the cabs of Paris. They are well patronised. Mad Bucharest holds it had form to walk. "To thirst — to walk — to die," says the proverb. The carriages groan under stout, beautiful, gorgeously-dressed, ill-combed ladies — half Parisian, half Odalisques. Cavalieri would faint at their beauty, principles, and practices. The first is to get the flesh soft and plump by eating starchy foods and sweets; the secoud to give it "life" by rubbing in burning paprika. Tin's work is done by the lady's cook. Dirt and magnificence enhance one another. Just now there is a reaction from fat, for the Directoire dress and thin Crown Princess Marie have set the mode. But fatness indicates prosperity in Bucharest ; and the solid, sensible classes rightly cherish their reputation for prosperity more than they cherish their reputation for chic. All this is distasteful to ultra-European Crown

Prince Ferdinand ; he thinks that gambling men spoil the army, and that ladies tattooed with paprika make bad mothers for soldier lads. What offends him more is that Bucharest never goes to bed. After its bad theatres — and its worse Italian opera at the National Theatre — close their doors, Bucharest asks itself how it will spend the evening. If it goes to Kostrotscheni or some other lively suburb, it returns next day. Every park outside the city is full all night of flirting pairs, attended by gipsy musicians with weird talents and weirder greed. Bucharest's lovers show their merit by throwing extravagant sums to these gipsies. The gipsy picks up the coins, stretches his hand for more, and usually gets it. Lately a Minister of the Interior told Rumania's Chamber that merchants complained' they were robbed wholesale! by their clerks "on the romantic basis." To be loose in morals is practically the programme of all Liberal sections of Rumanian society ;. and that is another reason why Ferdinand, who is a highly respectable prince, wants to call a halt to mad Bucharest's unsteady race. — The Army. — Ferdinand Victor is a serious soldier. He was bred in a starch-stiff Prussian regiment ; he is now Chief Inspector of Cavalry; he has read lectures on "the royal factor in war " ; and he has sadly concluded that the moral factor in war is not on the side of corrupt, dissipated, please-yovrself Rumania. Rumania's army is the strongest in the Balkans. Its technical and' medical equipment arc beyond doubt best ; and it has first-rate artillerymen with good guns. During the Russian attack on Plevna Rumanians proved their worth ; and ever since then King Carol and Ferdinand Victor have looked on Rumania as a semigreat Power, destined to lead the Balkans. But Ferdinand Victor grieves to admit that the richer and fatter Rumania becomes the worse are its morals and manners. Reform is to come through the Court, says Ferdinand. After last winter's revelations about gambling in the smart club " Buouresci," no member of the club was invited to Court. Ferdinand now proposes to boycott flower corsos, balls, and festivals, at which "an excessive luxury appears." He wants "a Spartan spirit in the army." Someone distorted this into " a Prussian spirit." An explanation had to be issued that H.R.H. did not say "Prussian." But I the story held good, and increased the i anger of Bucharest's young bloods at the Germanisation of the court. King, Queen, heir, and wife of heir are all Germans. " Are we to be degraded into a race of slow-growing, googled sausage eaters?" asks mad Bucharest. Probably not. More likely Bucharest will grow madder than ever. At' least, until money gives out, or until war comes. Then the tough, rough, penurious Bulgarian boor will eat up the brilliant Latin Ruraan. For, of all the Balkan peoples, the Bulgar is the only one sane — painfully and unconscionably sane.