The Auckland Star WITH WHICH AND INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. WEDNESDAY, MAY 27, 1936. THE QUEEN MARY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 124, 27 May 1936, Page 6

The Auckland Star WITH WHICH AND INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 27, 1936. THE QUEEN MARY.

For the cause that, lacks assistance, For the irrovg that needs resistance For the future in the distance, And the good that ice can do.

To-day begins the active life of the largest British ship ever built, a ship of which it has been saicl that she is "rooted by circumstances in the hearts and lives of the people." For years, known only as "534," she stood hallbuilt in her Clydeside builders' yard, and it seemed to a nation plunged deep in the economic depression that she would never be completed. She stood there at onec a consequence and an advertisement of the depression. Then the fusion of the two largest British companies in the Atlantic trade, and the Government's decisive support, enabled her construction to be resumed. That was a glad day on the Clyde, and scarcely less glad for millions of people throughout the British Commonwealth, for the news that the great liner was after all to be completed was taken universally as a glowing sign that the nation's confidence and vigour and enterprise were returning. And so in fact it has proved. The Queen Mary is the largest British ship yet built, but great size was not the object of her designers. She has been described, in fact, as "the smallest and slowest ship that could form one-half of a weekly' service" across the Atlantic. She was built to achieve a definite economic end, the maintenance of a four-day trans-Atlantic service, permitting of the sailing of one ship in each direction each week. She may not break all records—though the public hopes that she will—but if she achieves her special purpose her construction will have been justified. She has luxurious quarters, upon which the art of the modern decorator and furnisher has been lavished, but she is not a "luxury" ship for the rich alone. She is the successor to the great line of ships, of which the Mauretania is the most famous, which have upheld the prestige of British shipping in the Atlantic and maintained communication between Europe and the United States. The sailing of the great ship, like her launching in September, 1934, will, then, inspire feelings of gratefulness and pride not only in those who bid her godspeed at Southampton, but in millions of British people throughout the world who have not seen her, and will never see her. "We send her to her element," said King George at the launching, "with the good will of all the nations, as a mark of our hope in the future." She has been "at once a symbol and an agency of returning hope and well-being," and she sets out on her maiden voyage fraught with the hopes of all British people that her success will be no less, and no greater, than the well-being of the I nation in the years to come.