THE PRINCE OF WALES

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 4, Issue 6, 1 December 1925, Page 57

THE PRINCE OF WALES

' I 'HE Prince of Wales has reTHE Prince of to the has recently returned to the Hub of Empire from his South African tour, followed by a visit to ■ the South American Republics, where his genius for winning hearts and his bonhomie has disfused the happiest spirit of friendship and goodwill. The return home of the Prince has aroused afresh the question “When is he going to marry?” On this subject a well-informed Court official writes, under the nom-de-phime “Junius the Younger,” in the Daily Graphic, an interesting article from which we have culled some interesting excerpts. “Junius the Younger” remarks that it is frankly difficult to think of the Prince of Wales as now being over 31 years of age, and says: “Perhaps we too slavishly subscribe still to the last-century fetish that a man after 30 ought to cast the high spirits of youth and settle down. Woman —instinctively right, as usual — freed herself from the convention that she must leave youth and beauty behind at 40. ‘Youthful and beautiful at Forty’ sums up the gayer and wiser philosophy of the woman of to-day.

Cfhe Qreat zJldevniure “ f I 'HE Prince has set a similar A standard for men. If Youth is the magic age that all the seers and the singers have pictured it to be, it is not enough merely to enjoy it—-

we must also extend it. The Peter Panish quality of the Prince, his refusal to develop a premature pomposity, his frank acceptance of life as the Great Adventure, which is ever beckoning and never ending these things are good as marking a too-long-delayed revolt against the tyranny of time. It is because the Prince lives his life in this larger, more heroic, healthier way that it is so difficult to think of him as 31. Only hypochrondriacs find it necessary at 30 to write dirges about their lost years, “Withal, behind his high spirits and sunshot optimism there is a sense of responsibility, a degree of discipline, and a devotion to duty which would have satisfied even the stern codes of Queen Victoria, though one may venture the guess that she would have been hard to convince that a smiling face can go with a serious aim. The Prince has proved that it can. “There is one matter which cannot but engage the people’s thoughts more and more now that the Prince is in his thirties. “When is the Prince going to marry?” people are asking, not from any perky inquisitiveness, but from a natural and legitimate interest in the future both of the Heir and of the succession to the Throne. They recall that King George married at 28 and King Edward at 22. “Whom and when the Prince is

to marry are questions in which, under our democratic monarchy, the whole people have an intimate concern. Under the older dispensation a Royal marriage was an affair of high politics. Diplomacy, not Cupid, ordained the mating. Political gains —not infrequently, financial gains, too —were anxiously weighed. Not ‘ls it love?’ so much as ‘ls it politic?’ was the question to be decided before a Royal betrothal was sanctioned. Little wonder the Courts of Europe were strewn with broken hearts under this vicious denial of nature’s own choice.

“Popular sentiment throughout the Empire would be revolted if any attempt were made to marry off the Prince in this way. Happily the attempt will not be made. For one thing, the Prince himself is not that sort of man. When he chooses a bride he will be guided by his heart alone. For another thing, the convention that Royal blood may mate only with Royal blood has ended so far as the Empire at least is concerned. The right which both Princess Mary and the Duke of York have exercised of marrying outside the Royal circle cannot be denied to the Prince of Wales. “UNQUESTIONABLY the popular wish is that he may take as his wife a girl typical of English beauty, schooled in British tradition, and familiar with our democratic and domestic ways. Rumour at various times has associated him with this name and with that. Rumour may be disregarded. If the Prince has indeed made his choice it remains, so far, his secret and his alone. “It may be said, however, his return to the Motherland has brought him to a significant phase. Africa completes his grand tour of the Empire. It has been a broadening and beneficient experience for himan unrivalled apprenticeship in Imperialism. It would be natural if its close saw the close of his bachelorhood also. If the future is to confirm that forecast there could be no more fitting British wish to the Prince than that by his choice he may both enrich his own happiness and satisfy popular desire by leading a British girl to the altar.”