IDEALS OF PEACE, FREEDOM, AND HAPPINESS

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27055, 2 June 1953, Page 2 (Supplement)

IDEALS OF PEACE, FREEDOM, AND HAPPINESS

THE QUEEN’S GUIDING PRINCIPLE

Selfless Dedication

KING’S EXAMPLE FOLLOWED

With simple words, in her first message to Parliament after her accession, the • Queen laid down what were to be the guiding principles of her reign. Writing of “my dear father,” she declared. “He has set an example of selfless dedication which I am resolved, with God’s help, faithfully to follow.”

And the same theme ran through her second message a few days later when she thanked Lords and Commons for their Addresses of sympathy. "I pray,” she wrote, “that with the blessing of Almighty God I may ever justify your trust and that, aided by your counsel, and sustained by the strength and the affection of my peoples, I may uphold the ideals that my father set before me of peace, freedom and happiness of the great family of which I am now the head.”

The Queen succeeded to the throne, in poignant circumstances, on the morning of Wednesday, February 6, 1952. With her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, she had been seen off by King George VI at London Airport the previous Thursday at the start of a Commonwealth tour embracing Kenya, Ceylon, Australia and New Zealand. It had been originally planned for her father and mother, but had to be abandoned after the King’s severe operation the previous autumn. They spent a few days in Kenya, part of the time at the hunting lodge at Nyeri, which had been the colony’s wedding gift to them, and were due to embark at Mombassa on February 7. The previous night the Royal couple had stayed at a hotel built in the treetops in Aberdare Forest, some distance from Nyeri, watching big game, and they returned to the Lodge during the morning. She was resting when a telephone message was received from England that the King had died peacefully in his sleep at Sandringham House. In the sunlit lounge of the Lodge, through the open windows of which could be heard the peaceful waters of a stream, the Duke broke the news to his wife. She bore the blow with fortitude, remained entirely calm, and immediately set about considering all that had to be done. No detail escaped her, and less than three hours later the Royal couple left the lodge to fly home. It was the first time in British history that a Sovereign had acceded while abroad in the Commonwealth. Little more than 24 hours afterwards the Queen and the Duke reached London Airport whence they had set out so happily only a week previously. The Queen was a wistful figure in deep mourning as she stepped from the airliner on to English soil for the first time as Sovereign. She was not present at the Accession Council on the afternoon of February 6 at St. James’s Palace at which she was proclaimed Queen, and her first official fluty came on the day after her return from East Africa, when at a meeting of the Privy Council she made her accession declaration and pledged herself to uphold constitutional Government and to advance the happiness and prosperity of her peoples. She also took and subscribed the Oath for the security of the Church of Scotland. Devotion to Father

During the afternoon she drove to Sandringham and returned to London on the Monday in the Royal train carrying the King’s coffin. At the entrance to Westminster Hall on a bleak February afternoon she stood in New Palace Yard with her grandmother, her mother and her sister to meet the cortege, and in the chill Hall itself attended a short service conducted by the Archbishop of York. On the night before the funeral the Queen visited Westminster Hall while the crowds were slowly filing through, and almost unnoticed by members of the public, stood for ten minutes opposite the catafalque. The next day during the service in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, she placed on the coffin the King’s Colour of the King’s Company, Grenadier Guards, and sprinkled on it earth from a gilded bowl. Her training has prepared her for the many duties and responsibilities she is now called on to fulfil. She appeared in

public for the first time since the funeral on the day before Good Friday, when she made the traditional presentations of Maundy money. On the same day she went to Windsor and remained there for several weeks. In the meantime the change-over from Clarence House had been made and when she and her husband returned to London they took up their residence at Buckingham Palace. Shortly before the period of Court

mourning ended, the “Lancet” issued a *. warning against overworking the Queen and the advice was reinforced the same week by 5000 delegates to the annual conference of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes. Her official birthday had been fixed for June 5 and on that day the Queen attended the ceremony of Trooping -the Colour on Horse Guards Parade. She again rode the chestnut horse Winston, but as the Colour being trooped was that of the 2nd Battalion, Scots Guards, she wore a scarlet tunic of Colonel-in-Chief of the regiment, while her black tricorn, hat, modelled on that of a Guards’ officer of 1745, bore the Scots Guards badge, with no plume. Over her left shoulder she wore the blue sash of the Garter.

When the Queen was born on April 21, 1926, at 19, Bruton Street, Mayfair, it was not foreseen that that one day she would be the second Queen Elizabeth of England. The elder daughter of the Duke and Duchess of York, she was a fair-

haired, blue-eyed merry little girl of ten sitting in the schoolroom of her parents’ home in Piccadilly when news was brought to her that her uncle, King Edward VIII had abdicated, and her father and mother had become King and

Queen. She went on quietly with her lessons, more serious than usual, but selfpossessed.

Fitted for Queenship

The wise training and loving care of her parents throughout her most impressionable years, with the counsel of her grandparents, King George V and Queen Mary, were such as to fit her equally for the posjtion of a junior member of the Royal Family or for queenship. To her grandfather she was “Lillibet.” “Grandpa England,” as.she called King George V, was devoted to the little girl. His death was the first real sorrow in her life.

Her upbringing was kept as simple' as possible. She did not go to. school, but under the personal supervision of her parents she and her sister were taught by Miss Marion Crawford, a Scotswomen from Kilmarnock, a graduate of Edinburgh University. » The Princess acquired French, German and Spanish. She had special tuition in constitutional history and other subjects of special interest to her from Sir Henry Marten, Provost of Eton. A pianist of some ability, she has a wide understanding of, and regard for music, and is fond of books. She received lessons from her mother, and the Palace * chefs, in simple cooking.

The Princess was fond of outdoor pursuits, loved her dogs and horses and enjoyed dancing and going to the races. Her interest in the drama asserted itself in her teens, and with her sister, Princess Margaret, and the headmaster of the Royal School at Windsor she devised twp pantomimes in which she acted

She came of age when she was 18, and in July 1944 acted as a Counsellor of State, signing with her mother a Royal Commission to give the Royal assent to new statutes. She received an honorary driving instruction, wearing dungarees, • learned a lot about the mechanism of Army vehicles.

On her twenty-first birthday, broadcasting from the Union of South Africa, which she was visiting with her parents, to the youth of the Empire, the future Queen dedicated her life, to its service in these words: “I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and to the service of our great Imperial family to which we all belong.” Her marriage on November. 20, 1947, to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, R.N., was the culmination of a love match. The young people probably met at children’s parties ht the Mountbatten home in Park lane; but Lieutenant Mountbatten’s first recollection of meeting the girl who was to be his wife was at the Coronation of 1937. They met again when her parents visited the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, where Prince Philip was a cadet. The war came and the Prince went to sea, where he won a “mention” in dispatches. The two young people corresponded. On leave in 1940 Prince Philip was entertained by the King and Queen and went with them to the theatre, and on his next leave was invited to stay at Windsor Castle. The Princess and he went for long walks together. It was on July 9, 1947, that the Court Circular announced that the King and Queen had “gladly given their consent” to the betrothal of the Princess to the fair-haired, tall young man of her choice —a choice endorsed by the people. The Duke is the only son of the late Prince Andrew of Greece and Danmark and of Princess Alice, daughter of the first Marquess of Milford Haven. He was born on June 10, 1921, and was naturalised as a British subject on February 28, 1947, adopting the surname of Mountbatten.

The wedding in Westminster Abbey was attended by six kings and seven queens. A congregation of 2500 represented all parts of the world and all walks of life. The Princess and her bridegroom spent the first part of their honeymoon at Broadlands, the home of Earl Mountbatten, near Romsey, Hampshire, and the remainder at Birkhall on Deeside. On their return the Duke reported for duty at the Admiralty.

Birth of Prince Charles There was great rejoicing when on November 14, 1948, their son was bom. The infant Prince—now the Duke of Cornwall—was named Charles Philip Arthur George. Great crowds acclaimed them when they visited Paris in May, 1948, %nd they were also given an affectionate welcome to the Channel Islands in June, 1949. Later that year the Duke, as First Lieutenant of H.M.S. Chequers, a destroyer, went with his ship to Malta, and the Princess flew to the island on her wedding anniversary to speed Christmas with her husband.

The future Queen took part for the first time in the State opening of Parliament by her father in October, 1947. She first visited the House of Commons when a debate was in progress in the following January, and heard a foreign, affairs discussion in which Sir Winston Churchill, the Leader of the’ Opposition, took part. Riding side-saddle, she made her first appearance on horseback at an official ceremony at the Trooping the Colour in June, 1947. A statuette portrait in gilded silver of her as she appeared at the parade on her favourite horse, Tommy, was commissioned by her mother for her personal collection and permission was given for a certain number of porcelain copies to be made. Her second child—a daughter—was born at Clarence House on Tuesday, Auguist 15, 1950. Her cradle was the same that was used for her mother and Princess Margaret, and more recently for Prince Charles. She was christened in the music room at Buckingham Palace on Saturday' October 21, by the Archbishop of York, Dr. Garbett, and was given the names of Anne Elizabeth Louise.

As a mother, the Queen could quote from experience when she spoke on the

subject of children and motherhood. Opening the annual conference of the National Association of Maternity and Child Welfare at Westminster in June, 1951, she said, ‘‘Mothers are being shown the ancient truth that having a child is a beautiful and natural event which should not be made dark and ugly by the shadow of fear.”

Obstetrician’s Tribute

A week or two later she was admitted to the honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in London when Professor R. W, Johnstone, senior Fellow in Scotland, said, “As obstetricians we have reason to believe that the' Princess has proved herself a model patient. I believe that the perfectly simple and natural way in which she has accepted the dignity and responsibilities of motherhood have been an inspiring model to the young womanhood of the whole of the English-speaking world.”

The Queen is a very good speaker and will go through her speeches time after time beforehand to ensure that they express her thoughts exactly. She holds very definite views and puts them before her audience clearly and succinctly. As part of her training for queenship she has had to follow the trend of world affairs closely. On the way home in April, 1951, from her last stay in Malta accompanied by the Duke, she flew to Rome for a fortnight's private visit to Italy, during which they were received by the Pope. She wore the long black dress and veil which are traditional for' a papa] audience, and the Duke was in naval uniform. They were greeted by the Pope in his library at the Vatican and conversed with him in English for nearly half an hour.

Tour of Canada In the autumn of 1951, the start of the? tour of Canada had to be postponed because of the operation on her father. With her husband she landed at Montreal on October 8, began the tour from Quebec on October 9, and it was estimated that from then until they returned to London on Saturday November 17, they covered a total of 16,462 miles.

In the French-speaking parts of Canada she delighted her audiences with her fluent knowledge of the language. On her last night in Ottawa she and her husband joined other dancers at Government House dressed in cowboy costumes in an evening of country square dances The Princess, who the previous night had been wearing a tiara and decorations, put on a brown checked blouse with white Peter Pan collar and cuffs, a steel blue flared skirt and cuban heeled black shoes

Equally triumphant was their brief trip into the United States. They arrived in Washington by air on October 21, and were received at the airport by Presidenl Truman, with whom was Mrs Truman and Miss-Truman.

Before they flew back to Canada the future Queen presented the President with her father’s gift of an 18th century overmantel and a pair of candelabra for the Blue Room of the White House. The President echoed the thoughts o! everybody when he said in a farewell speech, “Never before have we had sud a wonderful young couple, who so com pletely captured the hearts of all of us.' On the very day that they began their tour from Quebec it was announced that because of his operation, the King wouli be unable to visit Australia and Neu Zealand the following year and that his daughter and the Duke would carry out the tour for him. Fate decreed however that it should not be completed at that time.

• From the earliest recorded days of the turf it has been the custom of the heir ■to the Throne to race horses. As Princes Elizabeth, she attended many meetings to see the King’s horses run and she has continued her interest since her accession. The Aga Khan gave her a Ally foal by Turkhan out of Hastra as a weddinf present, to start her racing string, and she named it Astrakhan. She registered her colours as scarlet purple hooped sleeve, and black cap—s variation of the Royal colours. After her accession and during' the period of Court mourning the Queen's racehorses ran in the Duke of Norfolk’s name and colours. Since then, they have run in her own colours which she adopted from King George Vl—purple, gold braid, scarlet sleeves and black velvet cap witt gold fringe. The Royal colours were first registered by King Edward VII.