HALT'S “PRINCE OF WALES”

Evening Star, Issue 18138, 30 November 1922, Page 4

HALT'S “PRINCE OF WALES”

HHR-AI'I’ASBNT'B COMTXG OF AOll. /■ho King of Italy's only son, Prince Umberto of Piedmont, who attained his majority recently, is probably the handsomest Royal Heir-Apparent in Europe (says a,Romo correspondent). Very tall and dark, like his Montenegrin mother, and with her large, expressive brown eyes, lie lias a smile of which the charm is peculiarly his own, and. the upright, military hearing which distinguishes all tho Princes of the House of Savoy. It is partly tho result of generations of warlike ancestors, partly the effect of intense •personal training, for Prince Umberto, like his father 'before him, has been brought up from earliest youth on the strictest system of military discipline. When quite a child ho was placed in charge of a military governor, Captain Bonaldi, and lived for yea-ra under an iron regime of early rising and much study. Each day was planned out on & regular routine, in which the duties were many, the hours of 'recreation few, and meals of the simplest kind. The defect of this system is to check the growth of personality and make a mere machine out of a. human boy; but in Ibis case, though the Prince's outward appearance is stiff and soldier-like enough to satisfy any one of his ancestors, his cheerful temper and love of fun have not been entirely subdued, and will probably com o' to the fore now, when, being officially grown up, lie will bo able to enjoy a certain measure oif independence.

Wherever he goes he is extremely popular, especially with boys of his own ago, which is the real test. When twelve years old he joined the Boy Scouts, and by so doing gave an enormous encouragement to the movement all over Italy. Prince Umberto entered the army a your aijjf o as a simple .soldier in the Ist Regiment oi Grenadiers, stationed at Romo. Ho performed his military duties and marched witlp his company at reviews and other public functions just like any other private. Ho worked his way up to ho first corporal, then sergeant, and now, on his eighteenth birthday, the King lias granted him Mb commission an sub-lieutenant. “II ■ nostro principino ” (“Our little Prince ”J—that is the affectionate diminutive .by which the King's son is known ■from one end of Italy to the other, and wherever bo goes tho handsome boyish face and winning smile rouse unbounded loyalty and enthusiasm, Florence is s, ivory calm and collected city indeed, but it went wild over the Prince of Piedmont •when ho came there last spring to represent tho 1 King and open the new exhibition of modern paintings and sculpture. As ho drove through tho streets his motor car was covered with flowers; wherever he wont crowds would collect and wait for hours to catch a, glimpse of him, and cries of “We want, our little Prince!” “Lot us see our Prince!” rose up on all sides.

The only thing Italians complain of is that they do not see enough of their Prince, and they'particularly admire—and envy —tho iway in which the Prince of Wailes lias'moved freely about among his father's subjects from his earliest years, •