PRINCE’S GAY DAY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 138, 15 May 1925, Page 12

PRINCE’S GAY DAY.

STUDENTS’ RAG AT CAPETOWN. DRIVE IN ON-WAGON. CAPETOWN, May 2. The outstanding feature of a crowded day for the Prince of Wales was a students’ rag, when the Prince was invested as Chancellor of the University. A procession of motors outside Government House was replaced by a wagon drawn by 16 oxen, and the Prince jumped into the driver’s seat. An escort consisting of an army of “Cossacks,” bearded and carrying brooms at “the present,” formed up in military fashion.

At the piano on the wagon a student struck up “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

Surrounded by a thousand students, the party made their wav to the City Hall amid tremendous cheering. Rising in the centre of the audience, a student impersonating General Hertzog gravely announced: “I am entirely opposed to secession” ; while another, imitating Mr Ramsay MacDonald, conducted vigorous singing, with the refrain, “You may forget Malan ' and Boydell, but you’ll never forget me.” The hearty singing made the Prince laugh, and when, at a rounded period in the Vice-Chancellor’s speech, a student put a lien in front of the Administrator, tho venerable professors and the Prince joined in the laughter. The Prince in an extempore speech thanked the students. A drive round the mountain, interspersed with several chats wi(h school children, followed, and the Royal party had lunch at the historic Vanderstel’s homestead at Constantia where the Prince delighted several hundred representatives of all South Africa with his tribute to the scenery, declaring: “I don’t know of anything finer.” He stopped the car at Constantia Nek to pick up a girl of three years of age who was waving to him. He accepted her “bunny rabbit” as a souvenir, and kept waving till the child was out of sight. This afternoon the Prince laid the foundation stone of the University on a magnificent site at Groot Scliuur, which, lie recalled, was the gilt of Cecil Rhodes, who knew no difference of race between the South African and European strains, and who saw no barriers between the Union and the British Commonwealth, which now formed the surest nucleus of the wider fellowship of the League of Nations.

The local politicians mentioned in the students’ song are Dr. D. F. Malan and Mr T. Boydell, Minister of the Interior and Minister of Posts and Telegraphs und Works, in the Hertzog; Cabinet.