KNIGHTS OF ST. GEORGE

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 132, 7 June 1930, Page 6

KNIGHTS OF ST. GEORGE

SIR W. BIRDWOOD'S BANNER (From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 2Mb April. On tho afternoon of St. George's Day, the members of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George'held their annual service at St. Paul's. Members of the Order, preceded by tho choir and clergy, walked iu procession down the north aisles and up tho nave. All were in uniform or Jevoc dross, with the White Cross of tho Older prominently displayed. The Knights Grand Cross, wearing their magnificoiifc bluo mantles and collars, and the officers of tho Order in crimson, added a touch of colour to the end of tho procession. A special part of the ceremony was the substitution of the banners of FieldMarshal Sir WilHam Birdwood, Com-mander-in-Chief in India, and Lord Forster, a former Governor-Generakof Australia, for those of the late Lord Kintore a- the Jato General Sir Charles Monro. In this procession Major-General J, H. Bruche, Australian military representative in this country, carried tho banner of Field-Marshal Sir William Birdwood, which displayed its azuro ineseutcheon of the Southern Cross commemorating Sir William's wartime command of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, and Captain A. Laurence bore that of Lord Forster, with its allusive hunting horns.' This was handed, like tho other, to the King of Arniß, who entrusted it for erection to Lord Bichard Nevill, who had beon Chamberlain to Lord Forster's predecessor, Lord Denman, as Governor-General of Australia. Lord Forster took his own banner from the hands of his squire and gave it to the King of Arms; Field-Marshal Sir William Bobertson acted as proxy for tho Commander-in-Chief in India. The little procession thou returned to the choir, the light falling effectively on the Order and tho saxou-blue mantles of the Knights Grand Cross, in whose elaborate collars the Lion of St. Mark and tho eight-pointed Cross of St. John of Jerusalem flank the crowned Lion of England and tho initials of tho two patron saints of tho Order, whose own badges and cross appeal: only on its Star and Pendant Cross.