OUR GRACIOUS QUEEN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 258, 28 September 1935, Page 15

OUR GRACIOUS QUEEN.

KINDNESS TO EX-SOLDIER. How a few words spoken by the Queen to a nerve-wrecked cx-soldier so restored his lost confidence that he feels he can “face the world again” was described to a Press representative in London by the man himself.

Before the war he was a professional man. Since then, owing to shell shock, he has been cared for by the Ex-Services AVelfare Society., which has curative homes in Kent for those suffering from mental disorders and for those who have recovered. The man’s new hope came with a visit paid by the King and Queen to one of the society’s institutions. “I was attending an exhibition where we were showing electric pads and blankets made at the homes,” he said. “I was standing alone at our stall while the chief salesman was away for a few minutes when the Queen walked up and spoke to me, “I was almost petrified with fear, but she smiled and asked me questions which I managed to answer. My confidence was restored and I felt that I could face the world. Having talked to the Queen, I felt that 1 could talk to anyone.” The incident was referred to in a London breadcast of the work of the society by an “Unknown Soldier.” “It may surprise Her Alajesty to know,” he said, “that by speaking to one man who had shunned Iris fellow men for years after the war she enabled him to recover his confidence.

“The Queen spoke to him. At first he was paralysed with fear, but managed to respond to her kindly smile and questions, with the result that today he is the best salesman in the industrial centre.”