ROYALTY.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 15 May 1922, Page 5

ROYALTY.

t , L ; VISIT TO FRANCE. ; . i \ ALWAYS GOOD FKIENDS. ■ ■■■: ::\Y;i& I'EESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT PARIS, May 13. When touring the Ypres battlefields, King George stopped for some time at the grave of an Australian, Sergeant McGee, a posthumous V.C. He reached Arras on Friday, and motored to Notre Dame Delorette Plateau, where a hundred thousand Frenchmen fell in a battle lasting a year, and where a memorial with a righted lantern is to keep perpetual vigil. The King met Marshal, Foeh there, and visited several ceme- j teries, depositing wreaths of red laurels. He also visited Vimy Eidge, which the Canadians captured, where he met the Canadian High Commissioner and Mr JRudyard Kipling. While at Loretie the King listened eagerly to Marshal Foeh and Lord Haig j describing various famous points and' explaining details of the stupendous battle. He turned to them once, confidently saying, in French: "Toujours, bon amis, Vest cc pas?" ("Is it not! that we are always good friends?") ! Marshal Foeh replied with fervour: ( "Tou jours, toujours, pour les in ernes ehoses et les memes raisons." "Always! Always! For the same pur- | poses and for the same reasons.") He j grasped Lord Haig's hand, and as the two Marshals held hands in a grip j of comradeship, the King placed his ■ hand over theirs. The scene yfrus worthy j of record by a great painter—on a hillside scarred with graves and overlooking devastated France, the British King sealing the comradeship of tAvo, great war leaders made an historic; scene. | The King and Queen visited the Ter- %! linethun cemetery, which concluded' their tour of the battlefields. The King delivered an oration, including a j message to the war bereaved. He said: , "For the past few days I have been' making a solemn pilgrimage in honour of the people who died for all free men. ' I should like to send a message to all who lost those clear to them in the Great War, and in this the Queen joins me. ; Amid surroundings so wonderfully typical of that single-hearted assembly" of nations and races forming our Empire, for ever in their last quarters lie the sons of every portion of that Empire across, as it were, the threshold of the Mother Island which they guarded that freedom might be saved in the uttermost ends of the earth. The generation of our manhood offered itself without question, almost without need, in answer to the summons. We may truly say the whole circuit of the earth is girdled with the. graves of. our dead." j The King's visit to Etaples cemetery, where there are ten thousand British graves, was marked by a touching incident. A letter from an Englishwoman was handed to the King, in which the writer begged the Queen to place a few forget-me-nots on the grave of her son. The King, in the absence of the Queen, reverently bore the flowers to the graveside, where he knelt down and placed them at the foot of the tomb and gave instructions that the flowers be specially tended and left undisturbed. The King was received at the entrance of the cemetery by Sir Allen Hogben and others. The King and Queen have returned to London, and were enthusiastically welcomed by crowds during their drive to Buckingham Palace.