"A SCRAP OF PAPER."
(TO -THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR."( r111,—Perucing the Life of the King of Roumania, it occurred to me that the following passage might interest your readers, and be held by them to Le of greater import to-day than when it was written. It refers to the early reried of his rule in Roumania, and, though set down in the third Iperson, embodies the late King's exact words as dictated by him in after years :— "Prince Charles had taken a solemn oath to the Constitution, and therefore could not depart from it, though Roumanian statesmen of both parties had frequently presented to him that, when a choice had to be made between a sheet of paper and a country's ruin,' one must not hesitate to tear up the paper. It was, however, impossible for Prince Charles to agree to this view, for the Constitution was more to him than a piece of paper, even though it offered him no means of securing the prosperity and development of the country."—Authorized Edition of The Life of the King of Roumania, Edited by Sidney Whitman (London; Harper ; 1899), p. 105.
Here we have at least one member of the House of Hohenzollern who shrank from treating solemn obligations as "scrape of paper."—! am,
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