KING'S BROADCAST

Northern Advocate, 29 December 1934, Page 9

KING'S BROADCAST

FAMILY SPIRIT INSPIRING MESSAGE “CLOUDS ARE LIFTING.” GREETINGS TO DOMINIONS. [British Official Wireless .l (Received 2 p.m.) RUGBY, December 27. The Christmas “Festival of the Family,’’ as the King described it in his broadcast to the peoples of the Empire, was celebrated throughout Britain quietly and in an atmosphere of more confident optimism than has been the case for some years. The holiday was without news, for politics were temporarily forgotten, and there was a happy absence of those calamities which so often comprise news.

It was a green Christmas of mild and occasionally wet weather. Family reunions were general throughout the country. Greetings by long-dis-tance telephone and telegraph kept the Post Office exceptionally .busy. Most people stayed at home, and the roads were singularly free from traffic.

As in the case of the two preceding years, the great event of Christmas Day was the King’s broadcast, and a programme of Empire greetigns. The King’s short message was marked by impressive simplicity and sincerity, and was addressed to all members of the Empire family. There were special greetings for the Dominions—“through whom the family has become a fellowship of free nations”—to the far-distant colonies and to the peoples of India, to whom His Majesty sent an assurance of his constant care for them and desire that “they, ‘too, -may evermore fully realise and value their own place in the unity of the family.” Will To Conquer. Although the world was still restless and troubled, said the King, the clouds were lifting, “We have still our own troubles to meet, but if we meet them in a family spirit they will be overcome, for private and party interests will be controlled by care for the whole community.” In a moving passage at the end of his message, the King said: “May I add very simply and sincerely that if I may be regarded as in some true sense the head of this great and widespread family, sharing v its life and sustained by its affections, this will be a full reward for the long and sometimes anxious labours of my reign of well-nigh five and twenty years. “As I sit in my own home I am thinking of the great multitudes who are listening to my voice. Whether they be in British homes or in the far-off regions of the world—for you all, and specially for ypur children, I wish a happy Christmas. I commend you to the Father of Whom every family in Heaven and on earth is named, God bless you all.”

Full Comprehension,

The Empire broadcast which preceded the King’s message heightened the effect of his words. Listeners were taken without a moment’s wait from one extremity of. the Empire to the other—from Australia to Canada, fi'om the North-West Frontier of India to Rhodesia.

Little talks from these places gave an extraordinary impression of the unity which has overcome distance. Not the least impressive was the concluding item from Lymington, the central village of Britain, where an old shepherd who had never visited London nor seen the sea, told in a broad dialect of his life on the Cotswolds.