"The Two Heroes"

Jews have justly complained for decades that they never have been able to get justice in hard-boiled little Rumania. Last week the fat was in the fire as His Majesty Carol II behaved again not like a Rumanian but like an infatuated Gentile with a fascinating Jewish friend, Mme Magda Lupescu.

The German, Japanese, Italian, Polish and Portuguese ministers to the Rumanian Court last week attended the funeral of two members of the anti-Semitic Rumanian Iron Guard killed in Spain in action under the White standard. It seemed to these five experienced diplomats that Carol II, Hitler, Emperor Hirohito, Mussolini, Smigly-Rydz of Poland and Salazar of Portugal all want the Spanish war to end in Red defeat, and they were probably right, but in attending the Iron Guard funeral last week they had momentarily forgotten Mme. Lupescu--a dangerous thing to do in Bucharest.

King Carol flew into such a fury that the Cabinet of Premier George Tatarescu hastily offered His Majesty their resignations and burned up wires to Berlin and Rome demanding the recall of German Minister Dr. Wilhelm Fabricius and Italian Minister Ugo Sola. The Cabinet sent "warnings" to the Polish, Portuguese and Japanese legations against repeating the offense of attending in Bucharest an anti-Jewish funeral.

For a few days Premier Tatarescu, his resignation not yet accepted by irresolute King Carol, strutted bravely at Bucharest, an amazing Balkan bantam who had tut-tutted Der Fuehrer and Il Duce. Next came crash!--and CRASH!--the replies of Berlin and Rome. The angry Dictators in almost identical telegrams slapped King Carol in the face by telling the Royal Rumanian Government officially that the envoys of Germany and Italy had attended in their private capacity "the funeral of the two heroes" and that no ground for asking their recall existed. Friends of Mme Lupescu, "Smartest Woman in the Balkans," were inclined to admit that last week she had "perhaps overreached herself."

Members of the Iron Guard swear a solemn oath to "be faithful to King Carol and do away with Mme Lupescu,"but most Rumanians believe she is shaken down regularly by the Guard, may even be its largest financial contributor. An Iron Guardsman salutes another with outstretched right hand and the words. "Long live the King and the Captain!"' to which the reply is "Health!" By "The Captain" is meant tall, thin, passionate Lawyer Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, 37, although another Fascist group is led by Professor Alexander C. Cuza, 79. Typical Iron Guard meetings are held at midnight in a Rumanian forest glade, with Guardsmen wearing in tiny bags bits of "the sacred Rumanian soil," and the orator of the evening emphasizing his points' by brandishing a revolver, sometimes discharged for special emphasis. Iron Guard shirts are green and some wear swastikas but the movement is frenziedly Rumanian, not a German offshoot. It especially attracts Rumanian students, and traditionally the Rumanian student, like the Chinese student, is a highly excitable and politically-minded youth often beaten up by police. Because too many Jassy University students had been tortured by police in efforts to make them "sing" and incriminate the Iron Guard, the Prefect of Jassy was assassinated by "The Captain" in person in 1925. In 1933 vigorous Premier Ion Duca forced the Iron Guard to dissolve officially, removed its candidates' names from the parliamentary voting lists, was assassinated. His fine memorial is now regularly desecrated by groups of Rumanian students who afterward button themselves up and march on shouting, "All for the Fatherland!"

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