ROYAL TOUR FUNCTIONS

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27246, 13 January 1954, Page 2

ROYAL TOUR FUNCTIONS

“ Not Enough Young People ”

COMMENT BY BRITISH JOURNALIST

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) LONDON, January 12. Not enough young people are meeting the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, says the correspondent of the “Daily Mirror” with the Royal tour, writing from Wellington. “There was little, barefooted Esther Fawcett, who broke away from her grandmother and scrambled on to the Royal dais during the Maori reception for the Queen at Arawa Park. But apart from Esther’s gatecrash the Queen and the Duke have met only four children—and the New Zealand tour is half-way through. “The rest of the programme is heavily laden with adult occasions. “This is a great pity. Pleasure and interest lit the faces of both the Queen and the Duke when—on those isolated occasions—they saw young people coming towards them.” The “Daily Express”, featuring an article by Lady Pakenham, mother of eight children, on present-day manners of youth prefaces it by a reference to Esther’s behaviour and says: “A Royal tour picture of the girl who ‘dared look at a Queen’ starts off an argument for every parent. Was it just delightful childhood spontaneity—to be encouraged? or ‘bad manners’—to be suppressed? “Well, the Queens answer was a friendly smile and the invitation ‘Come and sit by me.’ And that is the answer, too, of Lady Pakenham.”