DRINKING THE KING’S HEALTH.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XIV, Issue 850, 21 June 1906, Page 22

DRINKING THE KING’S HEALTH.

It has long been known, unofficially (says the “London L.V. Gazette”), that his Majesty considers the toast of his health is duly honoured by being drunk in water or any fluid best suited to the moral and material wellbeing of his loyal subjects. Ahasuerus, who reigned from India even unto Ethiopia, about 521 b.c., set the

royal fashion of giving the people full liberty to drink or to refrain, “according to every man’s pleasure,” and the most sage and judicious monarch in Europe is not likely to be behind the King of Ancient Babylon in his respect for men’s scruples ir digestions. But the Army Council, who apparently have less faith than the majority in his Majesty’s tolerance, approached the King on the subject, and have received his express permission to make known privately to the officers of the army that “total abstainers can always drink his health in some non-alcoholic drink to his entire satisfaction.” Accordingly the Council desired commanding officers to convey this permission to the rightful quarters “as privately as possible,” and somebody, evidently in the belief that everything that appears in a newspaper is relegated to the depths of unplumbed privacy, has communicated this order to the public press. The army is supposed to have learnt much since the South African war, but they have, apparently, some things yet to learn—that a newspaper is not a dead letter office, for instance.