REAL PRINCE OF WALES.

Timaru Herald, Volume XCVIII, 11 December 1925, Page 5

REAL PRINCE OF WALES.

HIS ZEST FOR LIFE QUESTION OF MARRIAGE (By Sidney Brooks). The Prince of Wales’ return brings him to a decisive phase of his life. The war absorbed him. from 1914 to 1918. For the past six years he has been almost incessantly on the move, and the Empire and foreign, lands have really seen more of him than liis own country. The phase lie enters upon now is one. of settling down in his own land, among his own people. But what experiences, what a» multitudinous panorama , of. scenes, what an incredible variety- of life, has lie not known and witnessed and inv bibed in the past ten years! Since he kicked over tho traces at the beginning of the war, and insisted —there is no othc-r word for it—against Kitchener, against Buckingham Palace, and against Whitehall on going, to the front and being attached to a fighting division, he has seen life and death, the world and the Empire,, peril and pleasure, under every guise and at the shortest range. NO CHOCOLATE SOLDIER., Oddly enough, only recently, when I was meditating on this article, an officer friend recalled those old days at Loos and on the Somme —how the Prince refused to bo caged l up at headquarters, how ho took his turns of duty in the trenches and how coolly and competently without a touch of. bravado, lie carried on at more than one hot corner. But that would be like him. He could not be a Chocolate Soldier any more than lie could be o. prig or a milksop. But still less could he swagger or advertise himself. I suppose, in a sense, the -Princo is still, as he was then, at war with his position. Here is a man with great nnpotite for life. He likes to mingle with the enticing world around him at every wholesome point of sport and pleasure. _ ' But, being the Prince of Wales, lie is not a free agent. He cannot always indu'gc liis hearty inclinations. His life 1 1 :>.h in it far more prohibitions than privileges, .and far more duties than relaxations.

PRIDE IX THE T.-VI RIPE What. enormously ins helped C Prince vo accept and observe the r< striclions. live boredom, the jhojioI lions routine grind ol his position, ii, i: own power io serve it. That is a cans which enlists-every capacity, every in., oiion. every aspiration lie possesses. There eamo to him during the wa oik! there has been confirmed in bin since by bis tours of Judin, .Austro lasi a, South Africa,, and Canada,. : firm and fervent pride in tl;p Britisl I slock and the British mission. And C Unit lias boon added the realisation first, tliat lor multitudes of .people, i’ato lias made him the chief representative of the British name, the man by whom his country and his people are to bo judged, and that it is for him to conduct himself nceordingiy : and secondly.' that there ha ve been, r-ntrnsfoi'l lo him some gifts ol interest and affection, that wherever he displays them .strengthen the Empire, strengthen the Crown, and make lor a.‘ full uui.ty between Croat ami Creator 'Britain.

ORPORTCNTI.T FOR SFRVICF In what these gilts and poW'i'S consist, the Prince is probably the last, man in the-. Empire either io know or to care. But an outsider has not much diflieulfy in resolving the reasons for i he Prince's universal popularity. They axe to be fouji4 in that frank;;

■ and steady gaze of liis.. the honest face in which a natural shyness still struggles with maturity and experience, his wliole'buoyant .air of freshness and vitality, the unforced, irresistible smile, the felt ’ atgfirst' glance and never afterwards questioned, of associating him with anything mean or i pretentious or crooked. ! For the Prince himself the acclaim that everywhere greets him probably constitutes one vast bewildering fact j —bewildering, but bracing.- He can- ! not but be aware that .it makes him l an Imperial asset of -the very first order, and that these tours of his, exhausting as they are,’ represent the best service that he or any man can lender to the Empire. 1 I should say that by now it has not only reconciled him to liis position as Heir-Apparent, but has invested that position with a meaning and w r ith openings for usefulness that in his early youth he hardly suspected. After all, it is not hard for a Prince to be popular. In the case of the Prince of Wales I. should not' set so much store by it, but for two things. Tho first is that on the- few 'occasions when I have met him I have-instinctively liked and. trusted him. He struck mo as ringing true. He looked fit, ho spoko sense, but there was a plentiful play of honour about him, and no man could be more free from-airs or starchiness. But I have another reason, apart from my personal, inipressionns, forregarding the Princeis 'popularity with the- public,. and all sorts of public, as being just,. fully- earned, inevitable. . It is that he is equally popular with his staff, with the men who seo him in undress, who serve under him and know hint in all the revealing intimacies of. daily life. .They fairly worship hint. - And now he'.is-home again. • But--he returns, I fear, a rather tired man. If ever'a.man had earned the right to be let alone for a few months, it is the.'Prince. A period of quiet hunting,' quiet shooting, and quiet 'visits to country houses, with a. minimum of. public functions and speeches, • would be the best of all gifts that the nation could oiler him. I take it the Prince himself is quite aware of what the nation would most like him to do. It would like him to fall in love and marry. Tt does not in the least desire him to “contract, an alliance” for reasons of State. Hut for his own happiness it cannot help hoping 1 hut lie will sron '-ave a wile b.v his side, and. harrintr ctresses. divmcee.s, and Americans, it '■ts no limitations on his choice. So one as it was a love-match, the country ■‘■old he well content. But such things do not (onic to order r hv volition, and ilie Prince has suffiuillv indio'ated that he means in this a after to take liis own. hue and choose ■’is own time. So much the better, and ■ r > much the more intcresfmg docs liis 'fvst prolonged stay in these is’a lids luring the post ten years promise to be.