King and Queen Given False Impressions

Chronicle (Levin), 4 March 1947, Page 5

King and Queen Given False Impressions

Press' Assn.

"MAGNIFICENT ORGANISATlON"

Bv Telegravh

Covyright

LONDON, Mar. 2. #What the Royal Family is seeing is magniflcent and superbly organised, but it is not Af riea, says the ' Daily Express correspondent* on the Royal train.. If General Smuts organised the tour to demonstrate the efliciency of his regime then it might be said the butter ha? been laid on a bit thiekly. One night we stopped in the midqle of a dusk-lit vineyard through which a vast swathe had been cut to lay a special rail track. The ground Ava? lovely Avith flowers, but they had no( been there the day before. Once we stopped on a smooth island of turf which had'. been hrought. 200 miles to be laid on a barren veldt for 10 minutes' use. Another night we stopped at a siding surrounded by abelt of pines like a eoppice on a Surrey hillside. It was only Avhen you looked closelv you noticed the trees had nu roots and that they had been ombeddfed in the ground to screen the Royal cara van from the tedious surrounding of tirc desert. The Royal Family are not, as might be suggested, drifting through a qui'et. inconsequential holiday. They are vvorking extremely hard at the hardest task they have yet been called on to do. It seems unreasonable and a poor com pliment to them that they should be wholly insulated from anything As'ith a genuine meaning. It may be the King and Queen are now immune t'o the nnmbing effect of identicaj- triumphal arches over identical red earpets, but they are human and oue wcrnders whether it might not be possible to varv the eharade. The Queen will give her same captivating smile to the poor colourerl schoolmasfer Avho conducts the Bantu choir, but does she know of any edict that 'forbids any photograph of ner doing so being pubiished? The . King today showed interest in a tremendous shoAV of Union Jaeks anti Union flags in one town. Nobody though t to show hi-in a tin-slied materni'ty hospital that* had 12 beds to serve a community of 30,000.