Evening star., 1934-11-18


or a private affair?
If it is a private affair the son OF
King George and his fiancee have
some very strong reasons to complain
of the slush that has been SO vulgarly
poured around them during the last
two months. Poor Princess Marina
For weeks have been unable to open
an English newspaper without seeing
silly columns full of descriptions Of
"eyes that are as nearly as possible
the color of sapphires" and OF hair
brown with golden tints."
But it is not so certain that even
the marriage of the fourth son OF a
King with the princess of an exiled
DYNASTY has not some political impor-
lance and some historic meaning. This
is an explanation and even an excuse
for many indiscreet excesses of Gu
riosity.
Some Romantic Unions.
OF course, royal engagement no
longer means a transfer OF territory
or a change of an alliance, as was the
case with the Europe of Louis XIV
and even of Napoleon I. More than
that, even the minor political inf1u-
ences of royal marriages, such as
they still existed a generation ago,
are no longer possible. When the
son of King Umberto of Italy, Victor
Emmanuel, then Prince of Naples, IN
October, 1896, married a young prin-
cess from a very modest house. the
Petrovich- -Niegosh, whose ancestors
had simply been Vladikas-religious
chiefs-of little Montenegro since It'll,
this marriage was above all a mar
riage of personal inclination. But 1t
had also some political significance.
The German Kaiser, tactless as ne
was in all his ways and thoughts, had
made it point to find a spouse for
the future King of Italy, and the fu-
ture King of Italy had answered by
choosing, without advisers of any sort,
a Slav bride-a Slav bride brought up
in the old capital of imperial Russia,
so antagonistic to Berlin.
When King Alfonso of Spain. in May,
1906, married Victoria -Eugenia, Prin-
cess of Battenberg, born in arch-Brlt-
ish Balmoral, this was not exactly
political marriage. However, at the
time I was a young member of the
Italian Embassy in Madrid and well
remember the vexation of the Kaiser's
Ambassador, Herr Won Radiowitz,
when he OWNED that the betrothal
was to be decided; he saw in it-not
quite wrongly-a rapprochement of
Spain more to the newborn entente
cordiale than to the triple alliance.
Some Unions Ineffective.
But even granted that in some cases
royal marriages still have political
tendencies, it is not in the least GER
tain that these tendencies remain per-
manently effective as they used to in
the days when a marriage between
members of two different dynasties
constituted a permanent and hered-
itary factor of the foreign policy of
both the nations concerned.
Consider the most recent European
dynastic marriage that was supposed
at the time to have a great deal of
political importance-the marriage be-
tween Boris, King of the Bulgarians,
and Princess Giovanna of Savoy, third
daughter of the King of Italy, which
took place on October 25, 1880. Bull
garia was defeated in the World War
and was on very unfriendly terms with
her neighbors, the Serbians. On the
other side, the pro-Magyar policy of
the Fascist government in Rome had
strained the relations of Italy with
the Yugoslavs. 1t was natural, there
fore, that the marriage of the King
of the Bulgarians with the daughter
of one of the sovereigns of the vic
torious entente would be considered
in Bulgaria as a great political sue
cess. The newspapers Immediately
began to use that hateful and silly