BELGIUM: Notes, Aug. 9, 1926
TIME
Charlotte. Their  Majesties, the King and Queen of the Belgians journeyed sadly last week  to a great chateau near Brussels, entered, came softly into the  presence of a very old but smiling,...
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TIME
Charlotte. Their Majesties, the King and Queen of the Belgians journeyed sadly last week to a great chateau near Brussels, entered, came softly into the presence of a very old but smiling, clear-eyed princess whose retainers address her as “Your Imperial Majesty.” “So it is Prince Albert,” she said, “Albert, my little nephew. So, so. . . . The Emperor is not here yet. But he will come, Albert. He will come soon. . . .” Princess Charlotte, daughter of the late King Leopold I of Belgium babbled on. Their Majesties answered her questions gently, tactfully, with heavy hearts. The day was the 69th anniversary of her marriage to Maximilian of Austria, who became for three years (1864-67) Emperor of Mexico.* Fear for her husband’s safety and a premonition of his execution (murder) drove her mercifully insane a year before the event. She imagines herself still Empress of Mexico. She assumes that her brother, the late King Leopold II still reigns in Belgium. Secure within the armor of perpetual delusion she enjoys a tranquil happiness not vouchsafed to normal mortals. Sometimes she lives again the days when, as a child of nine, she romped sedately in a pelissed jacket beneath a mushroom hat. Sometimes she recalls proudly that her husband once called her “the better man of the two.” Mastication. King Albert and Queen Elizabeth consumed only dark, coarse “War bread” throughout the week. Peasants, the bourgeoisie and the nobility likewise masticated this coarse fare. Exporters estimated that some 3,000,000 Belgian francs were saved during the week through this self denial, enforced upon the country by King-Albert, now Dictator of Belgium (TIME, July 26 et seq.). Protest. Delegations of Belgian hotel men waited upon His Majesty last week, petitioned him not to sign a decree increasing the tax on foreigners’ hotel bills in Belgium 20%. The King was informed by many an anxious boniface that tourists will not flock to Belgium if the present inducements of free visas and low taxes are curtailed. “World Crime Wave.” The First International Conference on Penal Law assembled at Brussels last week with a roster of delegates from 40 nations, including a representative of the U. S. National Crime Commission (TIME, May 10, NATIONAL AFFAIRS). M. Carton De Wiart, perhaps most famed of living Belgian jurists, presided over the Conference, deplored statements by several delegates that “a World Crime Wave is now rising.”

*Against the advice of his brother, the Emperor Francis Joseph, he accepted the Crown of Mexico upon promise of support from Napoleon III, which was not forthcoming. Abandoned, he made a last stand at Queretaro in the spring of 1867, but was captured, court-martialed, executed on June 19 of that year.