THE KING'S SPEECH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22457, 29 December 1934, Page 9

THE KING'S SPEECH

BROADCAST TO EMPIRE SIMPLICITY AND SINCERITY (British Official "Wireless.) (United Press Association.) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) RUGBY, December 27. The Christmas " festival of the family," as the King described it in Ms broadcast to the peoples of the Empira, was celebrated throughout Britain quietly, and in an atmosphere of more confident optimism than has been tne 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 n green Christmas, of mild and occasionally wet weather. Family reunions were general throughout the country. Greetings by long-distance telephone and telegraph kept- the Post Office exceptionally busy, but most people stayed at home. 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 the programme of Empire greetings, and the King's short message had an impressive simplicity and sincerity, and was addressed to all members of the Empire family. There were special greetings to the dominions, " through whom fhe family has become a fellowship of free nations," to far-distant colonics, and lo the peoples of India, to whom his Majesty sent the assurance of his constant care for them and desire tbut " they, too, may ever more fully realise and value their own place in the unity of the family." " Although the world is still restless and has its troubles," said the King, "the clouds are lifting. We have still our own troubles to meet, but if we meet them in the family spirit they will be overcome, for private and party interests will be controlled by the care for the whole community." In a moving passage at the end if his message the King said: " May I add very simply and sincerely that if I may be regarded as in some true sense th. 3 head of this great and widespread family, sharing its life and sustained by its affections, this will be a full reward for the long and sometimes anxious labours of my reign of wellnigh 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 your children, I wish n happy Christmas. I commend you to the Father of every family on earth. God bless you all." 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, from the Northwest Frontier to Rhodesia. The little talks from these places gave an extraordinary effect of the unity which overcomes distance; but not the least impressive was the concluding item from Lemington Central, a village in Britain, where an old shepherd who had never visited London or seen the sea told in broad dialect of his life on the Cotswolds.