Voyage to the Antipodes

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22725, 11 May 1937, Page 4 (Supplement)

Voyage to the Antipodes

FOURTH ROYAL VISIT TO DOMINION

IN one respect the greatest voyage the King ever made was that brief one which took him —then a very junior naval officer, who was commonly called "Mr. Johnson" —into the Battle of Jutland on H.M.S. Collingwood. In the Imperial sense the greatest was that of 1927, which brought him, as the Duke of York, to New Zealand and Australia onboard H.M.S. Renown. On that odyssey of Empire he was accompanied by the Duchess, who was the second royal lady to visit these shores, and the first to travel round the world on a warship. His coming to the Throne has given to the tour to the antipodes, the main purpose of which was to open on behalf of King George V. the Federal Parliament when it moved to Canberra, a meaning far beyond what was realised at the time. His elder brother, as Prince of Wales, had already come to these southern Dominions to thank them on behalf of the King for their help in the Great War. The extraordinary fervour of the welcome accorded to him was not due entirely to his personality and charm: it had a quality that had its source in the fact that he was regarded as the future King. Parting from Baby Great was the welcome accorded the Duke and Duchess of York, a special enthusiasm being evoked by the presence of the charming Duchess, but still, it was of the kind due to a younger son who was not expected to reign. Now that the Duke is King his subjects in this land and in Australia find in retrospect a new sense of satisfaction in the visit. It gains in retrospect the wider meaning of the visit of the Prince of Wales, and a profound pleasure is felt in the knowledge that the King and his Queen have been the guests of these young nations of the mighty British Commonwealth. On a bjeak winter's day—January 6, 1927 the Renown sailed from Portsmouth. "With that unerring instinct for the sentimental they have possessed through the centuries, the British people of Britain regarded the departure with more than their usual interest in the doings of Royalty," says Taylor Darbyshire, who travelled with the party as representative of the Australian Press Association. "The whole journey, its objects, its circumstances, particularly appealed to their imagination—and in a two-fold manner. First of all, there was the King's son embarking on an Imperial duty as his father had done before him, to take anew to the people of the young Dominions beyond the curve of the world, the greetings of their kinsmen in the British Isles, to carry the personal touch of the Throne into the homes of those who not so many years before had stood shoulder to shoulder in the trenches. There was that—and something else, too. Scarcely six months before Princess Elizabeth had come into a world that most eagerly welcomed her. Now, just when her "baby days and baby ways" were becoming most fascinating, her father and mother were leaving her to fulfil an Empire duty. Every woman in the tens of thousands who thronged the approaches to Victoria station, or stood packed along the Hard and down the - beaches to Southsea, or crowded the decks of the shrieking sisterhood

of tugs and fer,ry boats which escorted the Renown down the Solent, knew just what that meant —and men as well as women reacted to the sentiment. "Just as the Duke himself had been left a small boy in knickerbockers when his father and mother sailed on the Australian and New Zealand tour 26 years before, so he and his Duchess were going at the same call, leaving their child as he and his brothers and sisters had been left, at the summons of public duty. There was not a man who did not feel the significance of the event; not a woman who did no, sympathise." The first call was at Las Palmas, and then across the Atlantic to Jamaica—familiar waters to the Duke who, as a midshipman, had served in the West Indies. With Panama astern the long southern voyage was begun. There was a brief call at Tai-o-hae in Nulohiva, one of the Marquesas Islands, and then a short visit to Fiji. Arrival at Auckland Auckland was reached on February 22, and the welcome by small craft on the Waitemata made a bright picture, notwithstanding rain, which has always remained in the memory of the royal visitors. Perhaps the most memorable incident of their stay in Auckland was the great demonstration of school children in the Domain and the "mobbing" of the royal motor-car when the excited children, having performed their display, broke ranks. Those who had a near view of that inevitable incident will never forget the happy "co-operation" of the Duke and Duchess in it. After the Auckland visit the Renown took the royal pair to the Bay of Islands, where the Duke caught his big game fish and incidentally addressed photographers whose launch threatened to interfere with the sport in a manner that could not be misunderstood. From the excitements of successful big-game fishing the Duke and Duchess went to the thermal regions. The traditional Maori welcome at Rotorua, for which there was a very large and representative gathering, was of absorbing interest to the visitors, and the Duke was particularly impressed with the imagery of the address, a translation of which is as follows "Messenger of the Era To Be" "Welcome! Welcome 1 Welcome! Sonl Welcome i" "Second of that name your Royal father brought to this distant land a generation ago, Welcome. Thrice has Royalty'deigned to honour our courtyard, to enter our humble house and to walk among us. It is good! "Thus is fulfilled the word we spoke on this ground to your elder brother, that those who govern this far-flung Empire -should walk and talk with its peoples in its severed parts, and* so understand and be understood of them. Come, then, in the spirit of trust* wherein England appeals to the hearts of all races, knitting them surely together in peace and goodwill. "Welcome, the Messenger of the Era to be, when space and distance may be made of small account, when words and works may encircle the globe—as does the sun, so that no part of the Empire may brood in gloom and there conspire evil. "Daughter of an honoured hou'3e, Welcome! Welcome! Thus did that first Royal Duke appear before the eyes of our fathers with his lady. Welcome the second Duchess. Ha! Is it

a woman's peace you bring? Woman's hands and Woman's tears have soothed the wounds of a warring world. Now woman strives for the peace of God, an enduring peace, the peace which passes all understanding. Welcome, then, embodying the ever-recurring hopes of mankind for a state in which health, happiness, and prosperity shall prevail. There are ruined horaea to be built again ; there are broken hearts to be mended ; there are empty places to be peopled; there are waste spaces to be turned into gardens. Come, then, with the Empire's call to all your kind, to cement its foundations in seriousness, with patience and forbearance. "Welcome, then, -Royal Son and August Lady! We do not need to repeat vows already made to His Majesty and his eldest son. Loyalty has become a tradition of the Maori tribes of New Zealand, who have come to know and to value the things for which the Crown stands. The generation which welcomed your Royal father has passed away, and with it has gone many'of the old-time; ways and customs of our people. How else coufd it be ? Aotearoa and Te Waipounami have become the common inheritance of your people and our people. "Welcome and farewell! Pass on to that larger land where awaits your ultimate duty, the dedication of yet another corner-stone in the proud edifice of Empire. Haere ral Haere ral" Sport by the Way From Rotorua the Duke and Duchess went into a camp prepared for them on the Tongariro River, and "for two days they enjoyed almost complete privacy. Both proved skilful anglers. The strenuous tour resumed; they travelled through the North Island, everywhere receiving a welcome that came from the heart of the people. The one great disappointment of the visit was that at the beginning of the tour of the South Island, a severe attack of tonsilitis compelled the Duchess to return to Wellington, where she remained until the Duke had fulfilled the arduous programme. Then she travelled south to Bluff on the Renown. The Duke went on board in a gale and they set off for Australia. The Duke declared that he had spent one of the happiest months of his life in New Zealand. This royal visit was the fourth to be made to New Zealand. First had come the Duke of Edinburgh in 1869, but in the capacity of captain of the Galatea. At the dawn of the century it had been the privilege of the country, not yet possessing the status of Dominion, to welcome King George V. and' Queen Mary, then th* Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York. Next had been the visit of their eldest son now the Duke of Windsor, in 1920. Since - the f visit, of the present. King. Ann Queen the Duke of Gloucester has toured tbr country. It is impossible to under-estimate the in> portance of these royal visits, especially no« that under the Statute of Westminster th? Crown is the one constitutional symbol of Em pire unity. It has been a great thing for the people of middle-age to be able to say that as children they had personal contact with King George V. and Queen Mary. For the younger generations it is no less important that they can say they saw the new King and Queen, listened to the voice of the King, and paid their duty as loyal subjects.