The Romanian Question

PLAYING FOR KEEPS

One evening in the early weeks of the ‘New Order’ in Roumania, a group of armed men, in the green uniform of the Iron Guard, burst into the country house at Sinaia, as the old man of seventy sat at his desk in the study. They fell upon the ‘Patriarch of the Roumanian People’ and dragged him out of the house to the dark road outside. As he lay on the ground, they cut off his famous flowing white beard, riddled him with bullets, cut his throat, stabbed the already lifeless body and threw it into a sodden ditch by the wayside. When the torn, beardless corpse of Nicolai Jorga was discovered the next morning, there was found, stuffed in his mouth, a copy of Neamul Romanesc, dated September 9,1940, containing the signed ‘leader’ entitled: ‘On the departure of King Carol’.

Thus did Roumania, under Hitler’s ‘New Order’ directed by the Nazi Gauleiter ‘Red Dog’ Antonescu, achieve the ‘moral restora-tion’ which this Roumanian general swore to his King, Mihail, to be the holy cause of the overthrow of Carol the Second.

King Carol, Hitler and Lupescu

“EITHER THE HUMAN race is going to have to improve its memory, lose it altogether, or get a new one.” Catherine Cornelius gave her brother a dismissive kiss. “You can’t fight that kind of amnesia. You might as well give up.”

“Never say die, love.” Mrs Cornelius went by with a pie. “I carn’t bloody believe it’s Christmas again!” This was her great day of power and she was celebrating.

“God help us, every one,” said Jerry.

He shared a despairing wink with his sister.

“I think I’m going to have to slip out for a bit.”

She hated to abandon him, but there wasn’t much worth saving at the moment.