Nelson Evening Mail TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 1936 THE KING’S BIRTHDAY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 23 June 1936, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 1936 THE KING’S BIRTHDAY

TO-DAY, throughout the nations ot the Empire, numoering in the aggregate upwards ot four-hundred million people (or about ope-fourth of the world’s inhabitants) there will be rejoicing that His Majesty King Edward VIII, who was born forty-two years ago, in the year 1894, celebrates his birthday. That rejoicing will be all the more hearty, because the KingEmperor is known to so many of his subjects by sight, since, when Prince of Wales, he visited not only India, but the Dominions, and many of the Crown Colonies. Indeed, there are living in this City hundreds of people who remember seeing the King when, as Prince of Wales, he toured New Zealand, and stayed in Nelson during his progress through the South Island. To his people everywhere throughout the Empire Edward VIII is a very real person, the recognised head, not only of the people of the British Isles, but of the Dominions, of India, and of the innumerable lands where the Union Jack flies. To-day, doubtless, the people of England will be rejoicing in celebration of the King’s birthday, but will they remember the cause which is so near to His Majesty’s heart—the removal of slumareas in England’s great cities, and their replacement by model-suburbs within easy distance of the industrial centres, to which workers can be quickly conveyed by modern means of transportation? The King takes an equally deep interest in all his people throughout the Empire, and they recognise him as their head, in whom they are all united, divisible into innumerable nations, but, under the Crown, a great political entity, whose strength is commensurate with its loyalty. To-day that loyalty will be stirred deeply by the knowledge that right round the globe, in countless countries and cities, the hearts of the King’s subjects will tifrn towards'the Throne; remembering that in the per-

son of him who occupies it they are cne people, honouring the same political head, strong in the unity which is theirs. It would be difficult for the people of an alien race to realise what loyalty to the Throne means to the King's subjects throughout the Empire. It is the stronger because it is freely given, and it is freely given because under the Crown the political welfare of the King’s subjects is guaranteed by elected assemblies, or by paternal Governments nominated by properly-constituted authority.