PEN PORTRAIT OF KING GEORGE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12575, 30 July 1910, Page 8

PEN PORTRAIT OF KING GEORGE

Tho very first time I saw the present Kin"" in the House of Commons (says Mi-."D. P. O'Connor in "M.A.P.") I v,aa struck, as so many other people have been, with his singularly close resemblance'ta tlie Czar of Russia. They are first cousins'; and the resemblance is, oi; course, quite naturail. When sons como from two sisters —and especially two .sisters so alike- in character, feature, and so bound together by intense personal affection ?/s the Queen Mothers olr Russia and England -it is natural that they .should resemble each other. Thera is, however, a certain difference. The face of the English King has a certain strength above that of the Russian ruler; it has, perhaps, also the more certain look of a man born and bred in the invigorating air of a free country, and amid an affectionate and loyal people than one might well expect to find in a monarch who breathes the tragic atmosphere of a country so divided as Russia by fierce political struggles. Not gifted, like his late father, with a powerful and almost inexhaustible constitution, King George can never take the übiquitous part in all kinds of life which his father did. The King lives a very careful, a very ni.xlest life; absorbed perhaps rather in the more serious problems of his life than inspired by that almost reckless joie de vivre which made the late Kin»; rush from one great public function to another —from the popular raoeconrse to tho ceremonial reception, of an ambassador or a Minister.