KING EMPERORS SILVER JUBILEE

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20603, 2 May 1935, Page 1 (Supplement)

KING EMPERORS SILVER JUBILEE

The Christchurch Star Royal Jubilee Number Thursday, May 2, 1935.

TWENTY- FIVE years King, His Majesty is celebrating the Jubilee of his Accession to the Throne. It was on May 6, 1910, that Edward VII. surrendered his trust in death. The peoples of the Empire, though divided by diverse interests, outlooks, and in some cases ideals, are realising with added force to-day that the King is the one visible symbol of their unity, and are rejoicing with him. Though King and Emperor, though more secure on his Throne than the Pharaohs of ancient splendour, he has watched rather than guided, because the responsibility has passed from him to his Ministers and to his people. Perhaps because perforce he has watched, has realised the perils, and has not been able to direct, his anxiety has been as great as his Ministers’ responsibility. Probably no British monarch has had so troublous a reign. The death of his father coincided with a serious constitutional crisis. The new King came at once into the responsibility of the issues it involved. But a few years later the shadow of the Great War lay across the land, and the darkness has remained. The King and his people have scarcely known either years of peace or tranquillity. Perhaps at no time as in the past quarter of a century has the world moved so fast. Changes have taken place, so great that those who live in their midst cannot assess them. Changes political, scientific, social and economic there have been and there will be.

Ancient Thrones have crashed to ruin. Some of the King’s Royal kinsmen are wanderers on the face of the earth. Some perished. Historians there are who say that the very Empire is changing. They fear the outcome of the commercial warfare, no less keen within the Empire as between Empire and stranger. Science has put new and terrible machines into men’s hands. Transport and communication have been revolutionised. There is another change. The voice of the people is speaking loudly, and still more loudly. Democracy moves on apace. These, then, are the changes tha't the King has seen. In them all, where is the place of the King? While so much has changed the King has remained —“the one remains the many change and pass.” Because of that he has come to mean something solid, something permanent in the eyes of the Empire. Because of that there is added force to-day in his jubilee, to the once trite statement that the King symbolises the Empire. It is not wholly that he represents the visible might of Empire —so many battalions, so many battleships or aeroplanes, or so many millions of wealth, miles of territory. It is partly that he satisfies the need of the people for something solid, when so many things are in a state of flux. The First Family in the land is so thoroughly normal in its ordinary life. It is the patron of nothing ultra new, nothing fantastic, of nothing that smacks of blatant wealth. It stands, then, by a curious change, not so much for the aristocracy, not so much for the moneyed people who have the time and the money to chase ever some new thing, but for the solid mass of the nation, whose life perforce is as relatively normal as that of the First Family, and who must earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. In the actual government of the Empire the King does little directly. What is his personal influence the Empire will not know until he dies, and the full story of integrity, wisdom and dignity is made known. But to the people who are not concerned with high policies, the King is respected not because he is “descended of so many Royal Kings,” but is honoured for more personal and intimate reasons. This is why to-day his people rejoice with him.