KING ATTENDS DINNER

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25995, 24 December 1949, Page 7

KING ATTENDS DINNER

ROYAL MARINE CORPS (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) (Rec. 11.30 p.m.) LONDON, Dec. 23. For the first time in the long history qf the Corps of Rbyal Marines, the reigning monarch sat down to dinner with its officers this week when the King, as Captain-General of the corps, presided at a formal mess in the banqueting room of the Savoy Hotel, London. The King’s colours and regimental colours from the three marines’ depots at Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth were draped behind the president’s chair and below them were' piled the silver memorial drums of the Royal Naval School of Music, which is also a marine establishment. Because the dinner was held in the hotel, uniform was not worn, the e “order of dress” being civilian evening dress with miniature decorations. The bugle major and four buglers with eight senior non-commissioned officers lined the entrance hall of the hotel when the King arrived, attended by his private secretary (Sir Alan Lascelles) and a naval equerry. Ten silver candelabra, bought for the occasion by each of the senior Royal Marine officers’ messes, illuminated the top table and they were lit just before the Commandant-General of the corps (Lieutenant-General Sir Leslie Hollis) proposed the only toast of the evening, “The King, our Captain-Gen-eral.” Afterwards His Majesty gave formal approval to a new mess regulation, which provides that each mess candelabra will be lit before the King’s health is drunk in future.

Three hundred officers, ranging from commissioned gunners to the Com-mandant-General, attended the dinner.