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In Bucharest the whole front page of the anti-semitic Universul was devoted to an article in which Minister of Interior David Popescu certified with details that the ex-King is an "immoral, epileptic, degenerate exploiter and usurper." M. Popescu summed up: "Future generations of Rumanians will remember Carol as the greatest misfortune his people ever suffered. Today ended part of the purgatory which our people have endured for ten years."
"SoldOut." The people of Rumania have been bled white with taxes in the past few years to build up an Army, an Air Force and the nearest thing in the Balkans to a Maginot Line — the Carol Line. These fortifications were to bulwark Rumania against an expected attack from Hungary. When in Vienna last fortnight Germany and Italy forced Rumania to give up one-half of Transylvania and the Carol Line to Hungary (TIME, Sept. 9), the instinctive reaction of many Rumanians was that the Government had let them be robbed. It took no great efforts of the Nazi Iron Guard to set them shouting: "Down with the traitors! We should have fought! We have been sold out!"
The statesman who capitulated at Vienna on orders from Carol II, Foreign Minister Mihail Manoilescu, last week suffered a nervous breakdown on the train back to Bucharest. But more than nerves were breaking. Rumanian editors, who for years had supported the regime, suddenly turned around and told the people of graft and corruption in building the Carol Line, denounced rampant rottenness in State and Court.
In Rumania corruption has always been more or less chronic, but King Carol in the past ten years has put up a show of developing from a Royal Scapegrace, first class, into a dictator, second class. But last week many of his subjects saw him as an archtraitor, or as an arch-fool who relied upon the guarantee of Great Britain to save Rumania.
Whose Iron? Adolf Hitler was putting the finishing touches to Mein Kampf in 1925 when the "Soldiers of Archangel Michael" (later the Iron Guard) was founded in Rumania. In recent years every effort by Carol to squelch the Guard — and over 2,000 youths of the Guard were executed last year by royal decree in a blood purge — has been quietly blocked by the Führer. Here was a ready-made fifth column and Hitler was not going to let it be wiped out. The Iron Guardists, nearly all fanatical Rumanian patriots of Sinn Fein recklessness, were not men to refuse German money or refuge in Germany when they had to skip Rumania.
One night last week the Iron Guard launched all over Rumania bloody but ineffective revolts. These were crushed by the Rumanian Army as easily as the German Army crushed the original Munich Beer-Hall Putsch. Last week the King might cower in his great creamy palace on Calea Victoriei while the mob screamed and the Iron Guard fired shots in the air, but the rioting never got beyond Army control. It was the Army's redheaded General Ion ("Red Dog") Antonescu who suddenly emerged on top of the pile at Bucharest.
Red Dog enjoys the confidence of his brother officers. He has been Chief of the General Staff and War Minister. But of late he was confined by order of King Carol at a monastery in Rumanian territory which was ceded last fortnight to Hungary. Last week he was released and summoned to Bucharest.