SHADE OF EROUARD SEPT.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLV, Issue 3978, 10 July 1915, Page 7

SHADE OF EROUARD SEPT.

Now that the Eentente had ripened into the armed jilliance, the French people see in the figure of the late King Edward VII. (“Father of the Entente”) the typical Albion, the modern St. George. Mr Chas. Milne, in the “Daily Chronicle," writes:“It is all the better than a legend because it is all true, and tlie heart of France leaps at it. Edouard Sept and Merrie England ! That is bow France goes to war beside us, and, ah ! if he could only return and ride along her embattled line, what a royal progress that would be. It- Would be a Field of the Cloth of Gold such as the red thread of war has never woven in any web of victory. The French do not doubt that Edouard Sept would have made the pilgrimage of their banners, they tako it for granted. Their one thought would have been how to honor him enough for what he {lid and was, aye, and for what he remains to them.

“He was the King of England, and lie adorned the throne, but lie was also Edouard of France. Ho .took bis way across its fair face as one born to do so, neither he nor any other questioning the thing. lie rejoiced, feeling wondrous happy, in tlie green graciousness of the French landscape and in the sunshine of her life. He had a soul for hers, the French fondly think, and that is why, in this hour of liigU reckoning, when Europe is being remade for a century, as Napoleon remade it a century ago, liis living presence in France is equal to a second British Army. You fight a great war for a great cause with tho weapons of the heart, the ammunition of ideals, as well as with steel cannon, and the French know it, better even, perhaps, than wo do; so they sakito the shade of Edouard Sept."