PRINCESS JULIANA.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 7 May 1927, Page 11

PRINCESS JULIANA.

HTHE gift to Princess Juliana of a stout note-book of the type used by all the students at Leyden, but bound in real leather, with the respectful homage of the University Stationer, has been noted with much satisfaction by the Dutch as an outward and visible sign that their Princess is just an ordinary girl student, immatrieulated for law and economics at Holland’s mosv famous university. • This marks the approaching end of one of the- most careful educations ■of this generation in Europe. For many years the Dutch people have been informed by a cursory line in the daily Press of this or that noted professor being commanded to the royal palace to instruct the Princess in his particular Branch of learning. For just as many years they have watched their little Princess grow up into a bigger one, month by month. For if ever the adage of the perfect child being one who is seen and not heard has been done in the case of the heiress to the Dutcn throne. Different from other little 2 )r i ncesses who have brothers more important to the State, and different even from Queen Wilhelmina herself, who was reigning all the years of her youth, under the regency of her mother, Juliana has had to learn the uuties or etiquette and becoming bearing on the part of the second in command from babyhood upwards. She has aceompaned her mother on visits of inspections to schools, hospitals, bazaars, and openings to various institutions from very early days. Nor will her position be easy for many years to j come. Like Queen Alexandra, when Princess of Wales, she will have many onerous dutes to perform. The Princess has had all the advan-\ tages to-day’s freedom for girls caai give, but there has been no laxity al- ’ lowed in study, nor any recreation ( which had not formally received the Queen’s approval. Other young girls of the same age were surprised a short while ago when the Princess appeared for only the second act of “Tannhauser, ” leaving Venus and her haunts to imaginaton, and the programme. Yet in all girls’ movements connected with sport and social welfare she is permitted to mix freely. In relaxation and in all kind of openair games and sport Juliana has had her father as constant companion. For —and this is contrary to the earnest aims of Queen Victoria’s consort— Prince Wilhelm of Mecklenburg has had no ideas from education whatsoever. A Junker from Mecklenburg, he has remained a Junker, in this case a very different matter from the type of great landowner and class politician domiciled east of the Elbe in Germany. A country squire, a great huntsman, a jovial social figure—these are the predoininant characteristics of his kind. A prominent figure at all the great winter balls and fetes of the nobility in Berlin, the Prince escapes from court life whenever he can. “Pi-ins Hein’’ never offended his wife’s people save once when he tried to indulge in his favorite sport at home —a scheme which shattered first on the innate kindliness of the Dutch, who dislike hunting animals for sport, and, second, on the protests of the peasants over their trodden fields. As Princess Juliana is obviously the most eligible princess in Europe, the question of a husband has long been in the mind of Dutch State circles. Owing ‘to the dffieulties that might arise in the direct line of succession to another country, no prince near a throne, or able, through a death, to reach a throne, has come in question as eonsort. Holland does not wish a German prince, or any ex-royalty of Central Europe. In the meantime, in the head of the person most concerned, the law studies at Leyden have thrust all other thoughts into the background.