THE PRINCE OF WALES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 150, 27 June 1934, Page 6

THE PRINCE OF WALES.

HIS FORTIETH BIRTHDAY.

ASPECTS OF HIS INHERITANCE.

EMPIRE AND THE WORKING MAN.

(By HECTOR BOLITHO.)

In our limited English life, wo cherish, certain pictures of the Prince, of Wales. We know of him as a speaker in the Mansion House, awakening the interest of hardened business men, for there is a practical, commercial strain in him which is surprising. We know of him riding over the fields in the sharp morning, with A gleam of November sun; The far-spreading English counties, And a stout red fox to run. We have seen him coming from the Dominions with his trophies of ivory, his plethora of illuminated addressee; we have seen him lighting a Toe H lamp or shaking hands with the members of a football team who have crossed the world to play at Stamford Bridge. We recall him wandering over the countries of l hie father's huge Empire. As the negroid court poet on the Gold Coast wrote of him: He Is the real Prince of Wales, Born in the diamond palace. True son of King George the Fifth. But he oft the pa'ace leaves — "Wanders in Dominions, To know himself Nations. But there is a more personal aspect of his cervices to the Empire which may escape us —bis compassion and his fierce sincerity. These form the keynote of his popularity, more than either his princely inheritance or his energy. He has identified himself with the anxious, insecure life of the mass of the people: indeed., it might bo. said that he has turned hie back upon society as a water-tight defined institution, for he makes his friendships where his interests lie, and he is in no sense a snob, although, like his grandfather, ho permits no intrusion upon hie princely prerogative. I think it could be said that the Prince of Wales spends half of his time with the mass of his father's subjects. In them his interests lie. The interest is genuine and exiled from all sentimentality. Royalty and the Masses. It is by example and not by preaching that the spirit of the poor is lifted. This the Prince of Wales has realised, entirely. The history of the interest of the Royal Family in the working man may be traced back to the Prince Consort. Neither Queen Victoria nor Prince Albert embraced the tenets of English eociety. They were conscientious, homely, and -in no sense "fashionable'' or "smart." Many peers and rich industrialists in England kept up greater domestic luxury than Queen Victoria, who could be grand upon a grand occasion, but who, in private, ate roast beef for her dinner every night and went to bed at ten o'clock. This simplicity estranged her from the self-indulgent society which was left over from the Regency and from tho reign of her uncle, William—an age when it was said that only one peer in all England ever went on- his knees to say his prayers. Queen Victoria stopped all that. She even attacked society in tho letters which she wrote to her children. The Prince Consort sounded the trumpet finally when he was asked to speak at a meeting during a time when employers and employees were at war. He angered the capitalists by attacking them, instead of the disgruntled workers. A section of the workers, whom ho had helped, named him "Albert the Good," but some of the capitalists saw him as an enemy. In the early days the antagonism between the Eoyal Family and the aristocracy was so strong that some of the peers refused to attend the Courts at Buckingham Palace, as this would involve the kissing of Prince Albert's hand. Thus early, the Royal Family took their stand against the sins of social pretension and gave their compassion to the working man. The Prince Consort built the first working men's flats in Kennington, with bathrooms, at a time, curiously enough, before there were any bathrooms in Windsor Castle. King Edward inherited his father's interest in the working man—it was no sybarite's patronage of the lowly. He copied his father by praising the working man at a meeting of employers. This intense interest is alive in the Prince of Wale.s in even greater degree. It can be said that he has exalted charity.

Interest in the Empire. There is another aspect of the public life of the Prince of Wales which is not wholly appreciated in England. He is one of the few public men ill the United Kingdom who understands the "Empire" point of view. The Prince's closing experience in the war provided the stepping stone to his appreciation and understanding of the new countries. He met the Canadians during the German retreat and early in 1019, he joined the New Zealand Division at JLevcrkueeii. These contacts with Dominion soldiers gave him the widened vision of the Empire which he needed. Like his father, he ceased to bo, a little Englander. ' King Edward had never thought naturally of the "far-away corners of the Empire. His interests wore." essentially European. King George was the first ruler who ever understood what we might describe as the Dominion point of view. Th.o Prince of Wales entered upon this same knowledge at the end of IMS, when he was with the: Canadians and Australians. Then .ho gathered a little of the knowledge which made it possible for him to approach the people of ■ the new countries from an enlightened, Dominion point of view, when he visited them in the years that followed. The Prince has thrown away many English prejudices. The Australian and New Zealander have one advantage over the average Englishman, and that is an unerring ability to see through sham and humbug. The Australian may disturb the Englishman with his accent, but his honesty is always admitted. Tho Canadian is less raw, but no less honest. The New Zealander has not thrown off the English cloak as definitely as these two countries. But, in the main, the new countries produce a harder type of man, who is also more honest and prone to dislike dishonesty. The Prince does not rely on the English people for his success in the new countries. Indians and kaffirs, who have frowned on politicians all their lives, see in him not the symbol of political rule and interference but the symbol of justice, which is above the local troubles which engage them. "Let me see my Prince—let me only see my Prince just once before I die," cried the thousands of Indians who crowded into the railway station to say good-bye to him. The dourest Dutchman of the Cape was converted, and old soldiers who fought in the Boer War rode out in the commandoes which met him, when he came to country towns. And perhaps General Smuts gave the key to the whole feeling the new countries have for him when ho said: "The peopl© of South Africa admire and respect the Prince very much. They love his simplicitv, his human ways, his sincerity. . . . He has lived a life of d Ay from his earliest days."