Marie to Marie

Queen Marie of Rumania telephoned in some agitation last week to her daughter Queen Marie of Jugoslavia. King Ferdinand of Rumania, phoned Queen Marie to Queen Marie, had suffered a relapse in his long, chronic illness (TIME, Nov. 29 et seq.). Soon a telephone operator who overheard the royal conversation started a rumor which grew and gathered, gravity until correspondents in Berlin asserted "on the highest authority" that King Ferdinand was dead. . . .

To check these rumors the Rumanian Government very characteristically suspended all electrical communications and held up the mails--thus giving the impression that perhaps even a revolution might be imminent. As the welling tide of rumor broke in a sensational surf throughout the press, only three pertinent facts seemed definite:

1) Dr. Sluys, head of the Solvay Radium Institute of Brussels, Belgium, who has several times administered radium treatment to King Ferdinand, suddenly left Brussels enroute to Bucharest where he arrived last week.

2) King Alexander of Jugoslavia ordered his special train to wait with steam up, night and day, in the station at Belgrade, and finally set out for Bucharest.

3) The abdicated Crown Prince Carol of Rumania, eldest son of King Ferdinand left Paris by private airplane, refused to state where he was going, was not followed by correspondents.