KING EDWARD

Hokitika Guardian, 6 May 1936, Page 2

KING EDWARD

■ ii ’ Afv A-SPEAKER'

• As a speaker King Edward follows the modern style in cutting out all rhetorical ornament, writes a correspondent in the London Observer. He avoids adjectives and adverbs unless they are, essential to the meaning. In'a word, he is direct and brief, not classical and allusive. On all except purely formal - occasions, when the choice of words is necessarily limited, his method is to study the subject first by getting up tHie local history, to /consult with the experts on various details and matters of fact with ’ which he is naturally unfamiliar, and' then to put his own - thoughts into words —short, crisp words chosen for their meaning rather than their reverberation. These are then, moulded into brief sentences, each siniply constructed and standing by itself. The whole produces an effect utterly unlike the jargon popularly known as “official” or “Civil Service English.” The King, .in fact, speaks tbe King’s English, not the crinolined variety, patronised by the Circumlocution Office. -Everyone remembers the famous occasion wlhen he claimed that he-found his own manhood in the war. Less well known, perhaps, was the remark that a. great deal had been done toward: housing the well-to-do since the war, hut comparatively little for the poor., , ’Other memorable occasions during the past 15 years at home and abroad, 'lha!ve shown' him, as . a man of strong personality and decided views who was not to be confined by his exalted rank to saying merely that Court officials thought was proper to be said. There is a time for platitude. ' But there is also a time for pfe/cision • and purpose. His ‘speeches may not be oratory as Gladstone and Pitt; and Peel understood oratory. But tastes and times 1 have changed. Similes have gone out, simplicity has come in, and with it a straightforwardness that, at least to our ears, sounds more sincere. The King not lacking in tact, and he has never cast himself for the role of candid friend. But what he says he means.