RUMANIAN DICTATOR

Southland Times, Issue 23782, 1 April 1939, Page 13

RUMANIAN DICTATOR

King Carol Faces An Ominous Year

By

DOUGLAS REED,

KING Carol, heavy hussar’s busby nearly hiding his eyes, field-marshal’s baton in his right hand, white cloak of the Order of St. Michael the Brave over his shoulders, steps on to a little dais to review his troops. Beside him, as always, is Prince Michael, heir to the throne he has already occupied once, a strapping lad of 16. Around, a few Ministers, officials, military attaches.

The only sounds are the music of bands and the tramp of feet, as the troops march past and the field-mar-shal’s baton rises and falls in salute. The windows of the houses around are closed and empty, not a soul is present save for the King, the little group around him, and the soldiers. The streets have been closed to the public, the parade is held in a vacuum. ★ ★ ★ EING Carol, unchallenged and resolute ruler of his realm, faces his most difficult year. He has just struck a deadly blow at those who thought to challenge his rule. This event of a few weeks ago was one of the most remarkable that Europe has seen in recent years—and that is to say a great deal. To embarrass the King during his visits to England and Germany, the pro-German and antiJewish Iron Guard began an organized campaign of bomb and incendiary outrages. That was not remarkable: they wished to show that they were strong and well organized. Remarkable was the retribution that fell on them. A day or two after the King’s return from his meeting with Herr Hitler their leader, Comeliu Codreanu, son of a Polish father and a German mother, and 13 other leading Iron Guards were shot, as it is said, while they were attempting to escape. The Iron Guards had asked for it, but were late in getting it. The Rumanians are peace-loving and humane people, and political murder has not been known for 70 years until the Iron Guards reintroduced it. ★ ★ ★ THEY did not kill Jews —no Jew has ever been killed in Rumania—- ' but they killed men who, in their view, prevented the restriction of the Jewish influence. Of the 14 men shot, Codreanu, as he told in his book, killed the Police Chief of Jassy on these grounds. Three others were convicted of murdering the Liberal Prime Minister, M. Duca, for the same reasons. The other ten jointly murdered Stelescu, a former chief lieutenant of Codreanu, as a traitor to the cause. After Codreanu’s death, three others attempted to kill the Rector of Cluj University, M. Stefanescu-Goanga, who as a former Under-Secretary of State for education had taken severe measures against anti-Jewish agitation in the universities. When these several murders of gentiles, in the name of anti-Semitism, , were committed, the death penalty was not sanctioned by Rumanian law, and moreover, the murderers enjoyed a

good deal of public sympathy on the grounds that their motives were not base ones. Therefore, they retained their lives; Codreanu even, until last year, his liberty. But now, at the end of 1938, when their crimes were old, they were shot. What is the moral of that tale? That King Carol is resolved to be unchal-

lenged ruler of his country and that if any Great Power wants to negotiate with Rumania it must negotiate with him, not with some third party. The sequel to the tale is the review of troops in the empty streets, the exclusion of the public from cafes and restaurants on the route, the windows closed by order, the discovery of a small bomb factory in a suburban house, the arrest of many suspected terrorists and even of an officer or two. ★ ★ ★ BUT Codreanu, dead, remains a complication. He died just at the moment when, after the annexation of Austria and the subjugation of Czechoslovakia, the problem “Germany” is becoming the greatest of all Rumania’s problems. Already Rumania’s rulers are being forced to do all they can to placate Germany. The process will continue.

For consider this Rumania. Six months before the end of the world war, overrun by foreign troops, forced to sign a separate peace, Rumanians faced a future of serfdom; their lot was to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, growers of wheat and borers of oil, for the Germanic Empires. Six months later, when Germany and Aus-tria-Hungary collapsed, Greater Rumania arose, its territory and population doubled. Now, with Germany approaching her frontiers, Rumania has many fronts to .watch. She has 800,000 Germans, and for them the Reich, through the “Fuhrer” of the Germans in Rumania, a former Austro-Hungarian officer called Fritz Fabritius, has demanded a

special status. Rumania has had to grant it, and in a country where all political parties have been abolished the Germans have in practice been accorded the right to have their own organization. Of more immediate menace, Rumania has a big piece of territory that used to belong to Hungary—and Germany recently helped Hungary to recover territory from Czechoslovakia. There is also a strip of land that used to belong to Bulgaria and a small district that would be claimed to belong to the Ukraine, if the “liberation of the Ukrainians” and the formation of the Great Ukraine State is actually among German plans, as many people think. But the first Rumanian anxiety is lest Hungary, with German support, should claim her little bit. One means of averting this would be to run faster than Hungary in courting Germany s favour. But the Hungarians are astute, and it is not easy to outrun them, even if 'the Codreanu complication did not exist; Hungary has already made a move that worries Bucharest by joining the anti-Comintern Pact.

★ ★ ★ THUS King Carol, his land so rich in wheat and oil, faces a difficult year. The subjugation of Czechoslovakia has opened all Danubian doors and given Germany countless possibilities, without the need for war, of operating among the small Danubian and Balkan countries, of playing them against each other, of dividing and ruling them. From Hungary, from Bulgaria, from the Ukraine, pressure can be brought to bear —and at home there are still those 800,000 Germans. Rumania is a distant Latin outpost, isolated far away among the Slavs and Magyars. The Rumanians look to France as their spiritual home. Walk along the Calea Victoriei and you will find the Galeries Lafayette and Hach- ° But in 1939 France and England seem almost as remote as the moon from Bucharest. Now Rumania is nominally a oneparty state, with uniforms, salutes, greetings—difficult things to graft on to a peasant people—and a supreme leader, King Carol. The man-in-the-field understands little of what is afoot and hopes only for a good harvest. But the politicians in their offices think mainly of Germany. Chief among them is Armand Calinescu, who as Minister for the Interior dealt the king’s blow against the Iron Guard. Closely guarded, he is a remarkable figure. A lawyer, he belongs to those small men who by energy and resolution seek to be greater than their stature, and he has succeeded. He is dark, always smiling, and wears, inexplicably, a black monocle in his left eye. It is very difficult to judge what a man thinks who always smiles genially and of whose eyes you can only see one. The legions of detectives about the Town Hall where he has his offices suggest that all the Iron Guards have not yet been brought to book. But Armand Calinescu has shown himself to be without fear. The Iron Guard is no more. Will it be heard of again? Nineteen thirtynine should give the answer—for King Carol, a year that will tax his statecraft.

Author of “Insanity Fair”