The Hawera Star. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10, 1925. HEIR TO OUR PRESIDENCY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 10 June 1925, Page 4

The Hawera Star.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10, 1925. HEIR TO OUR PRESIDENCY.

Delivered every evening by 5 o’clock •» Hawern, Manaia Normanby, Okaiawa, Eltham, Mangatr.ki. Kapongn. Alton, Tlnrleyville, I’ntea, Waverley, Mokoia, Wbakamara, ' Ohangai. Meremere, Fraser Road, an Ararata.

In his delightfully human novel of life with Kitchener’s Army—“ The First Hundred Thousand” —lan Hay sketches a private soldier who,' throughout the early period, of training, was remarkable for his vehement expression of Republican sentiments. Then, one afternoon, the King reviewed the regiment. As he passed along the ranks, his Majesty stopped here and there for a word with one of the men. Fate decreed that lie should pause to speak with th c Glasgow anti-monarchist. When the bonnets went in the air at the close of the review, none went higher than this soldier’s —and that evening the throne had a new advo-

t-jilo. Overseas exchanges to hand by last night’s mail suggest that something very similar has been happening in South Africa as a result of the visit of the Prince of Wales. As the guest at a Parliamentary banquet in Cape Town, his Royal Highness met the more extreme members of the Nationalist Partv —among them men who have been the stoutest champions of secession. With them all he seemed extremely popular. After a simple, straight-forward speech, in which he held up the ideal of the Empire as a brotherhood of free nations, the Prince sat down amidst a storm of applause. Members who all their lives had professed red-hot Republican'ism clamoured round him shouting and clapping. There were a dozen “rebels” anxious to have a further word with the HeirApparent; and dozens of others eager to teach him the words of Dutch ditties and songs. And all this in South Africa, where some people imagined a Royal visit might almost provoke a revolution! At this banquet General Smuts, speaking after the Nationalist Prime Minister, General Hertzog, was considered to epitomise the feeling of all sections of the Union when he referred to the Prince as “the future occupant of our hereditary Presidency.” The contradictory character of our British monarchy could not easily be stated with greater brevity or point; and it was a phrase which seemed to go home to the hearts of the colonial Dutchmen. There had been a good deal of noise and banter going on while their own leaders were speaking, but members became suddenly silent and attentive when the Prince rose. His speech ended amid such scenes as we have described. South Africa, with India the greatest of the monuments to British governing genius, Jias not been, behind the other Dominions in her welcoming of the King s son. “We are hoping,” General Hertzog wirelessed while the Prince was still at sea, “that the welcome awaiting your Royal Highness will make the memories of your tour delightful both to you and to us.” The fulfilment of that hope was almost guaranteed in the first tumultuous reception of the Cape people. The bitterness of party polit,ies __ an d it is bitterness in the present .Union Parliament —was quite forgotten when men and women of all parties and of both races crowded into the streets of the capital to catch their first glimpse of the Royal visitor. It is almost a tradition that Cape Town never cheers; but this time it flung away tradition and cheered till the echoes came rolling back from the mist-draped top of Table Mountain. For the five, days of the Prince’s stay at the Cape it was the same thing over and over again. At, the, University of Stellenbosch, famed for Rugby football and Dutch nationalism, he was given a boisterous welcome “as one of the bravest and most 1 daring of British sportsmen.’’ If there had been any doubt in the Prince’s own heart as the Repulse felt her way up to anchorage in the harbour, it must have been banished completely within an hour of his landing. Those who feared the bogey of secession may have held theii breath as the Royal barge drew near the wharf on the Tuesday forenoon. Their reassurance would be absolute when the Prince voiced his own appreciation on Saturday night of the same week: “You have already made me feel no stranger here, and if the wonderful welcome I have received ever since I landed at Cape Town is a foretaste of what awaits me throughout my tour, I can assure you that I shall feel very much at home, and I know I shall leave these shores at the end of July, not only regretfully, but with deep and lasting affection.” ■ In the face of so cordial a spirit, it will be difiicult for anyone to prove that secession is a ■ real danger in South Africa. No one man, of noble blood any more than of common, could have inspired such a welcome. Not as Edward Windsor was the Prince greeted at the Cape and the other provinces have been equally enthusiastic but as king-to-be of Great Britain and Ireland, and of the British Dominions beyond the seas. That is the link that binds. Not the throne of itself; not the sovereign personally; but the Empire of which, the throne is the symbol and the sovereign the. benevolent head.