HER MAJESTY.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18500, 22 February 1930, Page 11 (Supplement)

HER MAJESTY.

THREE CHARACTERISTICS. There are three words which recur constantly whenever people talk about Queen Mary, and this whether the speaker knows Her Majesty intimately, but met her but once, or not at all. Sincerity is the first of these; sympathy the second; serenity the third (writes Cather M'lnas in the “Morning Post”). All these qualities are of the kind which make their owners stand out from the rest of the world, wherever they are and whatever they may be; because they are qualities which cannot help inspiring trust, affection, and respect. If you meet someone whom you realise to be absolutely sincere, you are promptly saved from one of the most painful attributes of human intercourse —that sensation of doubt as to whether the words you listen to are really meant, or whether they express anything but the real conviction of the speaker. If you meet with a sympathy which you feel to be genuine, you have an Immediate sensation of being given strength; and a really serene person has an immense capacity for helping other people to grasp true values and hold on to them.

Sincerity—Sympathy—Serenity. These are great qualities, but in the case of the Queen they are employed to an even greater end—an unfailing, unselfish devotion to duty. Only by contrasting our own lives with that of Queen Mary can we understand the extent of the ungrudging services rendered to the nation by Her Majesty. You may enjoy your work and the kind of life you lead, either because you chose them deliberately or because you have grown to like them by degrees. But would you enjoy them so much if you knew that they were inevitable and could never be exchanged for something else? Could you go on day after day, knowing that you would never be able to retire, however much you might want to, and that you could not ever have an absolute holiday, in the sense of leading a completely different life from your usual one? If you knew that when serious illness or disaster overtook one of those dearest to you, your private anxieties must never be allowed to swamp your public duties, would you still be able to carry on with serenity which yet showed that it was conscious of and wonderfully responsible to a feeling of universal sympathy?

Imagination Needed. It is only by facing these facts squarely and with all the imagination at one’s disposal that any just appreciation of the Queen is possible. Everybody who knows anything about her at all knows how gracious and dignified she is on every occasion when she appears in public. Most people know, too, how extraordinarily wide and far-reaching are her sympathies. This knowledge is inescapable, because the Queen's duties as well as her person interests bring her into contact with such a vast number of people, and with such widely varying scales of existence. The natural result is that many sorts and conditions of men and women have opportunities for gauging the Queen’s knowledge of their individual problems, and for marvelling at her keen practical grasp, and intuitive knowledge of the most helpful thing to do. But everybody does not stop to think what a strain this must be to any human being, although the widespread -anxiety over the King’s illness made many people for more thoughtful and appreciative of Queen Mary than they had ever been before. Her Majesty’s high fortitude under a terrible ordeal, now happily past, has endeared her to the people of the Empire to an extent that cannot be expressed in words. No Queen i£ our history, regnant or consort, has ever been more deeply beloved than Queen Mary.