TROOPING THE COLOUR

Evening Post, Issue 12, 14 July 1936, Page 8

TROOPING THE COLOUR

FIRST OF NEW REIGN

CEREMONY AT GUARDS

PARADE

(From "Tho Post's" Representative.) LONDON, June 24.

"King's weather" glorified the ceremony of Trooping the Colour in honour of King Edward VIII's forty-second birthday on June 23, and attracted huge crowds to the Horse Guards Parade, including many New Zealanders. Wearing the uniform of Colonel-in-ChieC to the Grenadier Guards the King rode in procession through cheering crowds, accompanied by his brothers and attended by high officers of /the Court and the Army. He was watched by Queen Mary, the DuChess of York, the Duchess of Gloucester, and the Duchess of Kent, Princess Elizabeth, and Princess Margaret Rose.

It was the King's first appearance in public ceremonial since his accession to the throne, and Londoners were given a foretaste of next " year's Coronation celebrations. Royal salutes were fired in Hyde Park and from the Tower Saluting Battery. There was an impressive moment when the King reached the saluting point and the parade presented in a single flash. The massed bands played the National Anthem with a slow solemnity, which reminded the vast crowd the often-for-gotten truth that it is a hymn. After the Royal Inspection of the Line, the bands performed their slow, and quick march along the line, headed! by. the drum-majors, gorgeous in their State tunics and velvet caps, accompanied by Scots and Irish" pipers. The crimson King's colour was handed to the ensign and trooped in slow time down the lines. Then the Guards— the Blues, Grenadiers, Irish, and Coldstream—marched past the King, first in slow time and then in quick,time, after which the King placed himself at the head of his own Guard, and led the column off the parade ground down the Mall towards Buckingham Palace, cheered by huge crowds along the entire route. HEAVY SUMMER HEAT. The King suffered in the heavy summer heat. He showed how by a human touch at the end of his long ordeal in taking the salute. He raised his hand to his brow, as so many of his officers and men had done, in the periods of standing "easy." Then he shook'his head quickly with a gesture which brought smiles of sympathy to everybody who saw it.

Crowds of children who lined the route and surrounded the parade" ground set ;the note, and it was only fitting that the place of honour' was occupied by the little Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose. They sat at the Commander-in-Chiefs balcony, the Duchess of York immediately behind them, leaning forward every now and again as the Royal children asked questions.

All the Princes and foreign visitors (including the Duke del Monte, Italy, and Baron yon Schweppenburg, Germany) saluted, the window at which Queen Mary and the Royal ladies sat as they rode up. The King himself gave a half salute/ half wave, and a smile to his Royal mother' as he wheeled round to face the Brigade Queen Mary smiled in response, and the Royal children waved their hands. All around the parade children peeped from under the legs of police and Guardsmen, asking questions. The High Commissioner for New Zealand was able to arrange for 140 New Zealand visitors to be present on the Horse Guards Parade. Among them were Mrs. J. Begg and' Miss Begg I (Dunedin). , :