DEMOCRATIC KING

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 18922, 25 January 1936, Page 14

DEMOCRATIC KING

CURING SOCIAL EVILS STEADFAST CRUSADER CARE FOR ALL CLASSES "A short time ago King Edward VIII. then the Prince of Wales paid a visit to a hug© brick-and-glass block of model flats which had been newly completed in the midst of a London slum, wrote Clair Price in the New York Times two years ago. Passing an old tenement building which was about to demolished to make room for more model flats, he turned aside unexpectedly to enter it. ■■ln'one of its ground-floor rooms which served as bedroom, kitchen and living room combined, an old woman wiped her hands on a soiled towl and answered the knock at her door. She was struck almost. speechless upon discovering her visitor's identity.

"Come in, darling-" she blurted in her confusion. The Prince laughed and obeyed. For 10 minutes he stood listening to her. Occasionally be asked her a question. Was her husband working? How long had be been unemployed? What did they have to live on? Bui for the most part he stood listening. He lets his informants do the talking. He listens. His interest in what she told him was concentrated and direct. For the moment this housewife of the slums, with her bare forearms wrapped in her stained apron, was the one per son in the world who supremely mattered to him. NO LONGER. YOUTHFUL

He is older than he used to be. and perhaps sadder. The first faint crow's feet of wrinkles have appeared at the corner of his eyes. Every year he becomes less the Peter Pan and more the responsible citizen. He is still a democrat at heart. The Great War, the United States and the Dominions have, in fact, made hirn too much of a democrat to suit some of the Old Guard. The Old Guard have sometimes fell a bit anxious about his disregard of the mystery and privacy which used to be thought essential to' Royalty. They have felt that his hankering after American and colonial " ideas of democracy might incline him in later years towards Ministers of brilliance rather than character, for it is the great emphasis which the English place upon character in their public life that makes democracy suspect in the eyes of the O'ld Guard.

The Prince could hardly be as democratic as he is unless he were a man of strong character and innate dignity. To stand talking with a housewife of the slums and not to lose caste is, after all. an acid test of the power of personality. His sincerity is overwhelming. lie is utterly devoid of affectation. ON THE COALFIELDS The explosive energy which used to drive him hell-for-leather at his fences in the hunting field now in his maturer years sends him on a perpetual round of private and'public visits to all sorts of places which interest him—British Legion meetings, East Ejnd boys' clubsslum housing projects, centres for unemployed men, etc. He does this not only in London, but all over the country, and not only when the slums happen to be a popular issue in politics. During some of th& worst depressions in the I coalfields he tramped from cottage to cottage through the hardest-hit villages, looking at pay-sheets and working con ditions, talking with the miners and their families and incidentally drawing dountry-wido 'attention to the minerssufferings. There was nothing anaemic about these; visits. It is usual to regard-hbi-as a figurehead, and in all the oi'din ary functions of government he is. Hp cannot, for example, write to the Ministry of Pensions about an ex-service-man who has fallen on hard times withbut being promptly rebuffed. Nowadays he has lost much of the spontaneity which used occasionally to betray him into these indiscretions. The line of divi sion between what he can do and cannot do is well defined. But he is permitted to retain his warm and vividly human personality: he is allowed to indulge all his old eagerness to see everything and know everything for himself: anil "perhaps the affection which follows him wherever he goes is in itself ;i sufficient- power for any one man to wield. PRINCE OF ALL CLASSES More and more he becomes the Prince of an industrial country in a grimly industrial age. He gets inside the intimate problems Sf every class. It is no longer enough that the Throne should be merely above party lines. The King by accepting the first Labour Government in English history, sought to lift! if above class distinctions as well; anr tha Prince followed in his father's foot steps by making himself Prince of all classes alike. For the first time the three feathers which the Black Prince wore at Orecy have become the crest of a, prince who has swung away from soldiering, and into the multifarious social service of a modern .country. More and more he becomes the sober citizen enjoying the intimate and informal confidence of his fellow-citizens. If he had to write all his speeches himself he would have time for nothing else, for he has to speak oil almost every subject under the sun. But sonu of the phraseology that goes into a speech and all of the emphasis that goes into its delivery are his. And he does take-fire when speaking on a subject on which he feels strongly. AN EXPLOSIVE OITERANCE

He made a speech before the Association of Municipal Corporations at tht Guildhall, in which he outlined the piti fully small progress which had beei. made since the armistice in rooting out the vermin-ridden, rat-infested scmalo> of the slums. He urged bigger clearance projects, with larger garden spaces to attract slum dwellers. He tackled tht problem of rent, which swallows' up fi'on. a third to a half of the slum dweller's wage" or dole. ■ .'•This nation," he concluded, "cannot afford the perpetuation of .the Wiims. '1 hey are radial centres of disease, illhealth and discontent. "What is tin sense-of treating the slnru children fo, disease, and when they are recovered sending them back to the very centres where disease is rife? To me that is a process of appalling waste, inefficiency and, expense. Every generation has a dominating social task. Let our generation he remembered as the one whicl swept away this blot that disgraces our national life.'.'

For a Royal speech it sounds a hi! forceful, but cold print conveys an inadequate idea of its real forcefulnesa. In actual delivery it sounded more lik< the explosion of a righteous wrath which had been long pent up. It is difficult to read it* without reminding yourself that it was poured out by a man who w»s bom to the purple, who would have liked nothing so much as the command of a cavalry regiment in India, but who met the word" "duty" very early in life —first, in fact, as a child of seven, when he was told why the sentry in front of Buckingham Palace did not come in put of the rain—and, in consequence, sees rather more of English slums than pi, Indian cavalry nowadays,