THRONED IN THE PEOPLE'S HEARTS

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 99, 13 May 1937, Page 4

THRONED IN THE PEOPLE'S HEARTS

With deeply impressiye ritnal the Coronation of our new King and Queen was celebrated yesterday, and vast concourses of people have raised their voices in acclamation. King George VI, and the lady who is his Queen thus enter fully upon their reign under the happiest of auspiees and of auguries. From now on they may take up the many operous duties that will devolve upon them with a perfeqt assurance fehat they axe firmly enthroned not only in their high office hut alsb in the hearts of their people. In this they will find at onpe sojnething that will lighten the load of their responsibilities apd at the same time an iqspiration to so rule their own lives as to merit a continuatibn of the high esteem and deep affectipn of which such conyincing proof has at the outset been afforded them, The impressions of the pomp and pageantry of the day may, as mere spectacle, fade out from their minds \yith the passing years, but the spqntanequs and heartfelt demonstratiQns of good will an lqye must abide with them through life as proof of something wejl worth retaining. As fpr the peoples over whom it is their destiny to reign they have no cause for any misgivings as to their fondest hopes and expectations being fulfilled. Qur King has been born and brought up in an environment that shpuld have eminently fitted him for carrying out the functions with which a strarige freak of Fate has invested him. It may, indeed, be all to the good that he has been ealled. so unexpeqtedly to assumq the ' responsibilities that will now fall up.Qn him, for the ^uddenness of the cajl may well have good results. . For him, as for us all. his accession to the throne has had ahout it npthing of the 4 matter of course that might have somewhat dimmed the sense of all it should imply. At short notice he has been summoned to his high estate and under conditions that cannot hut leave their impress upon his own conception of duty he owes to the Rmpire over )yhich he i§ now to preside. Though not so widely travelled as the hrother whom xye had all so long regarded as likely to be our King for many years to come. he has yet made himself very fully and persbnally acqnainted with the countries that make up the Empire and may h'e eonfidently assumed. to he in full sympathy with the needs and aspirations of their various peoples. Though he i| tP he no ruler in the customary acceptation of the word, there is still mach of influence he can exercise and it may well he. believed that it will he the general welfare of all that he ' will haye at heart. Among the communities of Rritish hlood hy no mqans the least factqr in our new King's favour is that he has "by his side"— to use his own homely phrase — a Queen of their o.wn Jciu and oue who has already commended herself to them in all her actions and ways of life. In his choice of a wife the I*rince who was unexpectedly to hecome our King uuwittingly made choice also of one who was eminently fitted to become our Queen. To her and her two little girls — one of them perhaps to he our Queen Regnant of the future — the hearts of the people have gone out in the fullness of a real, uustiuted qnd confident affection. In our new Queen Elizaheth — about as hig a coptrast as could he found to the great one of her qame — we haye oiie whose domestic apd social example cau scarcely hut find response ampng her fellow women of all ranks and of all classes. In eyery way, then, are we happy in the Kiug and Queen who. yesterday fairly started on what all will pray may he a long and prosperous .reigu.