The Habsburgs are at it again. Remembering the family motto that a man may be down but never out as long as there is anything marriageable in sight the Archduke Albrecht has been paying court to the Italian Princess Giovanni and seems to be at least a Habsburg chin ahead of his Hohenzollern and Wittelbach competitors. That the family fortunes fully warrant this recourse to the final remedy is illustrated by the spectacles of the Empress of Mexico dying in Belgium and of the Empress of Austria living in Madiera.

Unfortunately for the Archduke, marriage in general and royal marriages in particular are no longer what they used to be in the days of his several times great grandfather. Charles V who, by merely choosing the right pair of parents, netted himself a christening gift of half the world. It is all the fashion in these times for Queens as well as other women to go about with the twelve pound look firmly pressed upon their still not unlovely faces. Hence to marry a lady of title or riches is no longer a passport to a life of honor or respect. Even princes must have careers, nowadays, or their bobbed haired ladies, what with their books and their lectures will quickly eclipse them and they will find themselves stuffed in a cupboard in a dark corner labelled "consort". No, the days when one married a kingdom and only incidentally a lady are gone forever. Moreover it has become customary in these affairs of late to secure the services of Cupid rather than those of the minister of state as marriage broker. But of course marital emancipation of royalty has only crept in with national indifference as to the outcome. It really doesn't matter very much who a prince marries as long as she is amiable and takes a good picture. Perhaps the Archduke realizes all this but finds it difficult to break a century old habit. He really deserves a lot of sympathy. Not that the Italian Indy hasn't every charm in the world, but any man to be pitied who blunders into a family where Mussolini is the political mother-in-law.