GIRL GUIDES

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25346, 20 November 1947, Page 2

GIRL GUIDES

REPRESENTATIVES AT ROYAL WEDDING

Princess Elizabeth’s interest in the Girl Guide movement has been of long

standing, and its members have not besn forgotten in the arrangements for her wedding. Ten representatives of the Girl Guides Association will be in Westminster Abbey. Apart from executive members representing England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, two Guides and one Ranger will be included. In addition, six places have been allotted to Princess Elizabeth’s own Sea Ranger Crew and the rest of the crew will be in the forecourt of Buckingham Palace. One hundred places have been allocated to Rangers and Cadet Guiders in a roped-in enclosure outside Buckingham Palace. Of these, 13 have been given to overseas members of the movement. The Boy Scouts Association has been given four places in the Abbey. Scouts will be on duty\ inside the Abbey and will sell the official programme along the route. In addition to Princess Margaret, two of Princess Elizabeth's bridesmaids were in the Ist Buckingham Palace Company with her —Lady Mary Cambridge and Lady Elizabeth Lambart. Lady Mary Cambridge is now a District Commissioner in Cambridgeshire. The main present to which members of the Girl Guide movement in all parts of the Empire are subscribing will be a Chippendale writing desk and a “Carlton House” writing table of a slightly later period, both of which are the personal choice ’of the Princess. New Zealand Girl Guides have contributed to this present. Princess Elizabeth joined the Ist Buckingham Palace Girl Guide Company in 1937, and was a Patrol Leader before she left the company to join the Sea Ranger branch of the Girl Guides in the S.R.S. “President 111 in 1942. The “ship” was rechristened the “Duke of York” in 1946, when she was launched by the King, and on the same occasion Princess Margaret was enrolled as a Sea Ranger. Sea Rangers are older Girl Guides (16-21 years) who are particulrly interested m seamanship. _ _ . Both as a Guide and a Ranger, Princess Elizabeth has taken the keenest interest in all aspects of Guide training and last year both Princesses attended a training week on the Guide Headquarters training ship—an M.T.H. moored near Dartmouth in Devonshire. Princess Elizabeth was at that^ time a bo’sun in the ship’s crew. In 1944 she became Vice-Patron of the Girl Guide Association; in 1945, Sea Ranger Com modore; and at the end of 1946, Chief Ranger of the British Empire.