Word: belgians
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...sell shoes for the family firm, headed southward with volumes of Latin poetry-Virgil, Ovid, Horace-packed along with his samples. After four years in the shoe business, he took a train to Washington in 1917 and offered his services as a volunteer worker for Herbert Hoover's Belgian Relief Commission. Drawing no pay (he skimped along on his savings), Strauss worked for Hoover for 2½ years, first as a sort of office boy and then as secretary ("My jewel of a secretary," Hoover called him). When Hoover went to Europe as wartime Food Administrator, he took Strauss...
...crashed into a tree. In 1940 Leopold refused the urgent pleas of his ministers to escape to London and set up a government in exile. Instead he surrendered to the Nazis and, while his nation was still occupied by Germans, married pretty Liliane Baels, the commoner daughter of a Belgian politician. At war's end Leopold moved on from Germany to Switzerland while liberated Belgium held a plebiscite to determine whether or not he should return home. Leopold's supporters narrowly carried the day, but so many riots greeted the King's arrival in Brussels that within...
...lived on at Laeken palace, joined his bachelor son at meals and on the golf course, complained bitterly of the ingratitude of his subjects in forcing him from the throne. He surrounded Baudouin with advisers who were usually at odds with government policy, interfered with affairs in the Belgian Congo,* and even flew to Africa to make sure that his unprogressive Governor General was kept in office. Royal speeches by King Baudouin were tape-recorded and put on the air with scant notice to Socialist Premier Gaston Eyskens or the Cabinet...
...affairs of state demanding government deliberation and approval, the Cabinet again felt itself insulted, ignored and affronted. Three days later, Pope John XXIII announced in Rome that he would perform the marriage himself at the Vatican, and let it be understood that there would be no civil wedding first. Belgian Socialists cried out that the constitution was being flouted, pointed to Article 16 which declares that civil marriage must precede the religious ceremony. The Vatican held firm: either no civil wedding or no papal ceremony...
...stop!" ended by saying resignedly that "I will leave Laeken; you must find me another place to live." Leopold's preference: the 18th century Villa Belvedere, just across the street from Laeken, once (under the second Leopold) occupied by royal mistresses. The government's countersuggestion: the Belgian royal villa at Grasse in Southern France, far from Laeken and King Baudouin. At week's end it seemed clear that Leopold was leaving. Unresolved: How far away would...