WOMEN THE WORLD OVER

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21975, 26 December 1936, Page 2

WOMEN THE WORLD OVER

(SPRCTALLT WRITTEN TOR THR FRRSS.) fßy ATALANTA.I Christmas brings a fitting finality to what suddenly became a British crisis and suddenly ceased to be a British crisis. Since “Atalanta” last wrote, a change, not dynastic, happily, but one of royal succession, has been effected with the consent of a loyal and consolidated Empire. It cannot be said that it is not a women’s matter; in every sense it is peculiarly every intelligent British woman’s matter. It has sharply brought to our minds the fact that the Throne, like every other institution of ours, rests upon a domestic basis, a home basis. Our peculiar British consolidation means that we are one large family, the largest the earth has ever seen.

Comment on some circumstances of this change would be entirely out of place in this column, as well as unnecessary. But even in parting with a beloved' King, whose brief reign will ever be remembered as one of active sympathy with his poorer, more helpless subjects, we have many comforting reflections. King Edward abdicated because he had no home, and found himself humanly unable to make one and remain a king. The Empire replied by stating an equally serious and fundamental truth—that the home must be a spotless example, whether high or low; the home is not founded either on money or on State law; it must be founded on character. So a valiant and outspoken king parted with a sad but resolute people without bitterness or recrimination on either side, each desiring most heartily the true wellbeing of the other. History offers no parallel to such an issue, and such a parting, but history will be intimately concerned with its repercussions. The New Court All eyes are bent hopefully on the new court, which is conspicuously founded on a happy and exemplary home. Excellently as Royalty functioned under George V. and Queen Mary, it would be folly to say that reading people here were satisfied with the social tone of post-war years in England. Let us hope that our own tone has not seriously deteriorated in the same interval, and that in British confederation generally the jam will not be judged on the scum. We suddenly realise that our new King is a student—a student precisely of those conditions and forces on which a country’s economic stability must rest. With no immediate idea of reigning, and obviously no wish to reign, George VI. has familiarised himself with the very problems in dealing with which his assent will now be required. A king has no politics, but there will be at least an invisible cooperation between him and his informed advisers that can hardly have existed before. These serious connexions. however, do not touch court life proper. I think it. was Ruskin who argued that Hodge, as the essential producer of turnips, was the real foundation of a. society which obviously must subsist cm turnips. By favour of Hodge, then, all the strata of national life go on functioning. The so-called highest layer of it bases its right to turnips on presenting to him that celestial appearance which he expects. The business of a court is to typify this celestial appearance; and this is undoubtedly a queen’s business. Here again, we are well found. The popularity of Queen Elizabeth began the day she married King George V.’s second son, and has increased every year since. But what is home without a nursery? The young life of the country has already been attracted by the King’s young daughters, brought up, as they have been, with such saving grace and simplicity. A hundred years ago, the eyes of England, at that time very far from court-dazzled, began to centre on a baby princess who lived to fulfil England’s dearest hopes and impart meanings to court life that had not been in evidence before. There are many who now point a thoughtless jest with the word “Victorian.” But Viclorianism remade England.

Victorian or Elizabethan? But before she was remade and promoted to world-supremacy as "Victorian,” Britain (or rather England, not then Britain) had to be snatched out of the fires of blazing Europe to become a world-factor as “Elizabethan.” If Edward VIII. was a lonely King, Elizabeth ' was a lonely Queen, about whose loneliness historians are divided still. As far as east is from west, are the role and character of our winsome Queen Consort from those of the “man-minded” Queen Regnant who “rose to chase the deer at five.” But we still conjure with the word "Elizabethan,” and some of us see perhaps more than chance in its return to court ceremonial in an hour when again England, now enlarged to “Britain,” is cast upon rocky seas and times. For one thing, there is both a hopeful and a reconciling ring in the return of this royal name to common ken. We are told that the consort of our new l King is the first Scottish Queen of England for 836 years. That takes us back to the love-match between the Conqueror’s son, Henry 1., and Matilda of Scotland, daughter of the sainted Saxon princess whose brother would have been the choice of Saxon England after the death of Harold. But she fled to Scotland after the battle of Hastings, became the wife of its King and the civiliser of a then rough and isolated people. Henry I.’s marriage with a princess as gracious and pious as her mother was the first humanising link between Saxon and Norman in England. Here, again, one wonders if an omen has been provided for much later historians to note. Did anyone notice that, while the recent answer of the Free State was awaited with a certain trepidation in London, no one asked Scotland’s opinion on the situation? Whatever it was, H mattered less than Cornwall’s or Yorkshire’s. Yet Scotland is half of Britain and was as old a kingdom as its southern half. The answer is that Ireland has a Parliament—two, in fact—and Scotland has none. Some Scots think this an unfair distribution of Parliaments. Queens have no politics, but the accession of a Scottish Queen seems a kind of omen.

Winter garden A carnival cabaret will be presented at the Winter Garden this evening. Special carnival atti-actions are offered, together with the latest English novelties. The Bailey-Mafston orchestra has arranged a very special programme of dance music. CALEDONIAN HALL A special Christmas carnival will be held at the Caledonian Hall this evening under the auspices of the Caledonian Select Assembly. Old and new dances, streamers, balloons, luckyspots, and four cash Monte Carlos, are the atti-actions offered. Geo. Bradford’s orchestra will provide the dance music.