THE ROYAL WEDDING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22006, 12 January 1935, Page 16

THE ROYAL WEDDING

AMERICANS STIRRED

ADMIRATION FOR THE KING INTEREST IN THE BROADCAST [FROM OUR OWN COHHKSI'ONIIKNT] NKW YORK. Dec. 20 Tlio Koval wedding was broadcast direct from W'ost-initistcr Abbey throughout the United States. In Canada it was broadcast several hours later by moans of a Blattnerphone record. It was the same on the occasion of the launching of the new Cunard liner. Canadians, resentful at not having the wedding ceremonies carried on their own radio circuit, remained up till 2.45 a.m. to hoar them over American stations. No event since the King's Christmas broadcast in 1932 has so stirred the American people. Newspapers and press services made the most elaborate arrangements to chronicle every incident associated with the wedding. The Associated Press had no fewer than 12 expert writers, engaged in furnishing a complete record, from dawn to the following dawn. Why this unusual interest? It is because of an entirely new outlook in the United States toward Great liritain. This is the only year in which we have not seen at this season continued articles about the war debt instalment, which fell duo on December 15. Interest taken in it was infinitesimal. But interest in the Royal wedding never abated from the day when the engagement of Prince George and Princess Marina was announced. World's One Stable Influence

American correspondents in London have, since the event, been closely analysing the real significance of the Royal wedding, and arc unanimous in expressing the conviction that the British monarchy, as represented in the King and his family, is the one stable, abiding influence in the world to-day. Even-those who are accustomed to write in the lightest vein were profoundly impressed with the outpouring of loyalty and affection which the wedding evoked among the King's subjects.

The most influential American writer in Europe, Frederick T. Birchall, of the New York Times, asks: " Why should uncounted millions of thd King's subjects feel that this marriage was also their personal concern?" Ho accepts the answer he found in the Times in London, whose editorial writer mused

over the same question. "Our Royal Family have refuted an old saying about familiarity," says this writer. "With them familiarity has bred respect, interest and affection. It is because we have known them so well, because thOy have come so much among us to share our lives, share our tastes and know our needs, that they have won what by reserve and remoteness they coidd never have won. Henceforth this bride, come from afar, is one of us, as every other member of the Royal Family is one of us." Admiration for the King Every thinking American has become a keener student of Great Britain since President Roosevelt told his people candidly that Britishers co-operated more than Americans with their Government in bringing the country out of the depression. Thd influence of British motion pictures and of British artists has been a strong contributory factor in this new American outlook. At no time since the war have Americans regarded the King with so much respect and admiration—even affection. They demand that every time ho speaks his voice bo heard throughout the United States.

Everyone connected with the stage, screen and radio is now assiduously studying the King's English. This interest in pure* speech received its initial stimulus when Hollywood, at the birth of thd talking picture, commissioned Englishmen and Englishwomen to teach motion picture personnel to speak correctly. The pioneers of the ndw profession made a fatal mistake in introducing an exaggerated, affected accent. Their day of reckoning came when the King was heard on the air for the first time in the United States on Christinas Day, 1932. Hollywood decided that tho King's English and no other was its model. What its artists said to those who had been teaching them may bo imagined.