ROYAL BIRTHDAYS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVI, Issue 21380, 24 June 1939, Page 20

ROYAL BIRTHDAYS

THE PRINCESS’S TRAINING After the din and clamour of Hitler's birthday celebrations it is an obvious reflection that it is pleasant to turn to a quieter- celebration of the birthday of a young lady whose destiny may not be less important than that of the present ruler of Germany, states the “Manchester Guardian.” It is inevitable that our thoughts of Princess Elizabeth should mingle with memories of the childhood of Queen Victoria, and it happens that it was from her thirteenth birthday that young Princess Victoria, as heir presumptive, began her training on a wider system. For it was at the age of thirteen that her mother began to take her on those tours through England in which she saw for the first time much of the land over which she was to reign, and it was then, in the diary which she kept of her travels, that she began to form that style which, as her biographies have pointed out, never altered afterwards and reappears with fidelity in the “Leaves” of many years later. Child of Destiny The idea of the Duchess of Ke it in arranging these tours was certainly a good one, but they made the Kingvery angry. Piloted by "the inevitable Convoy,” she insisted that, when the Royal yacht was lent to her. a salute should be fired (quite improperly) when she entered any port. At all the towns touched by the tours the leading citizens were expected to present addresses, though occasionally there were other presentations, as at Hastings, where “one sight was extremely pretty; six fishermen in blue jackets, red caps, and coarse white aprons, preceded by a band, bore a basket ornamented with flowers, full of fish, as a present to us.” No doubt Princess Elizabeth's expanding education will be on different lines, but she, 100, becomes the child