BIRTHDAY OF QUEEN MARY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23201, 27 May 1937, Page 16

BIRTHDAY OF QUEEN MARY

SEVENTY YEARS OLD YESTERDAY Yesterday, Queen Mary celebrated her seventieth birthday. This stately, regal woman, who, through the whole of her reien, has seen great happenings take place around her. stands to the Empire as a symbol of the permanency of family life. Her years have been bound up not only with the Empire, but with her family, and even to-day. her private affairs are as important a problem for her considerations as are those of her Empire. From the first, when as Princess May, the only daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Teck, she became engaged to the Duke of Clarence, she was respected and loved by the British people. On the death of the Duke of Clarence she remained closely attached to the Court, and later blessed both the nation and the Royal F<nily by becoming betrothed to the Duke of Clarence's brother, Prince George, Duke of York, whom she eventually married. The years afterwards were devoted to her duty as head of a Royal Family that sooner or later would be at the head of the Empire. And when her husband did eventually come to the throne of England, she only redoubled her efforts to be all that the nation expected her to be. She is a woman who puts her country first in everything, even before her family, and will sacrifice personal affections and desires in order to keep faith with the Empire that has come to look up to her as the ideal mother of the day. In the austere beauty of her face there is revealed a strength of character that asks nothing for self but everything for the nation over which her queenly influence is still felt as strongly as it was while her husband was on the throne. , ..... Beloved "nanny" of the two little Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, adviser to her son, the King, and his gentle wife Elizabeth, and head of a royal house the'unity of which is regarded as miraculous by the rest of Europe at the nresent time. Queen Marv may well be a proud woman as she enters on the seventyfirst year of her life. What her private feelings are, and whether she is content with what has passed and what is passing at present, nobody will ever know. She is an ideal Queen-mother, the Queen coming foremost, and as such conceals all vestige of private feelings that would seem to clash in any way with that ideal.