TOO BUSY TO MARRY.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2732, 14 July 1925, Page 8

TOO BUSY TO MARRY.

TITO PRINCE OF WARES. NO MATCH YET IN SIGHT. “WILL HAVE A FREE CHOICE.” Matters relating to the question of the marriage of the Prince of Wales arc discussed in an article by Mr. G. Ward Price, who is accompanying the Prince on his tour in South Africa in the capacity of official correspondent “The eagerness for the future King’s wedded welfare,” says Mr. Ward Price, has aroused among some sections of the British public a certain impatience. Speculation and gossip follow naturally. Many explanations, most of them grotesquely ill-informed, have been put about for the fact that the Prince of Wales in the early thirties still remains a bachelor. Yet the simplest of them ail is nearest to the truth. It is that the Prince has never yet had occasion to think about marrying. In a matter so important for himself, and the nation he quite rightly doe? not intend to be hurried. “Ho is Too Busy.” “Bike many other busy and efficient men. the Prince believes in concentrating on one thing at a time, and his attitude toward marriage is that it can quite well wait until his Empire tours are over. If there were a Princess ot Wales the dominions would naturally bo most anxious that she should accompany the Prince on his visits. Were the Prince of Wales a married man he could not hope to see the Empire so thoroughly as he now sees it in his travels, and he does not intend to allow marriage to stand in the way of that. “These long journeys are by no means undertaken on the spur of the : moment. They have been planned a whole year, and eomottmes more.

ahead. Four months to Canada, seven months to Australia, seven months to India and Japan, seven months to South Africa and the Argentine—these are arrangements that have been filling up great spaces in the Prince's agenda book ever since thd war. In the case of any other young man whose immediate future was so encumbered with foreign travel It would seem not only natural, but praiseworthy, that he should postpone thoughts of matrimony until his time were more his own. Prince’s Free Choice. "It can be stated with confidence that the King and Queen agree with their son’s attitude toward this question of his marriage. The days have gone past when the marriage of the Heir to the Throne was a matter to bo settled in his youth by the monarch and his political advisers with small regard to the personal preferences of the young man whose mestic future was thus taken out of his own hands. "The Prince of Wales will have a free choice in selecting his bride. Those who know him best are very positive that he will be guided solely, as he has a right to be, by his personal affections. It is possible, of course, that he may take as wife the daughter of some foreign royal house. There is no pressure, even of public opinion, upon him to do so. On the contrary, the people of Britain want nothing so much as a real love match for their Prince Charming. One may hazard the guess that no such match is yet in sight. Able to Choose Wisely. "But. if the Prince, in the eyes om impatient people, has appeared to tarry unduly, he has at least gained the necessary experience of life and affairs to choose the more wisely when the time comes. The idea that royalty must inter-marry only with royalty is as oGrman one. unknown in England until it was imported by Hanovarian kings two centuries ago. It tended to the formation of a royal international caste, whoso tics, or feuds, of cousinship sometimes’ exorcised occult and disastrous influence upon the political relations of their cqjintrles. "But, though suitable foreign princesses have lately become rarer, charming British girls, .with, birth, breeding, and beauty that fit them well to share some day the throne of this country, are plentiful enough. The graceful and efficient way in which ,the Duchess of York has taken up the new role to which her marriage called her has shown how well new British princesses can be supplied at home. Bore Leisured Days Coming. "Much of the youth of the Prince of Wales has now been given to serving his country, both as its First Ambassador, and—what. is even more valuable—as its First Commercial Traveller. A lull in these arduous ctivitleas is now approaching. If one of the fruits of the more leisured days that await him were to be his choice of a British bride, it is certain that the delight in Great Britain would be more universal than at any national event for a generation past.”