THEIR MAJESTIES' ONLY DAUGHTER.

Hutt News, Volume 2, Issue 42, 27 March 1930, Page 2

THEIR MAJESTIES' ONLY DAUGHTER.

"Let me do it." When Her Royal Highness, Princess Victoria Alexandra Alice Mary of Windsor, only daughter of the King of Great Britain, Ireland end the British Dominions beyond the eeas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India, the second lady in tike land, w2xo will in due course become Princess Royal of Britain was small, tibis was one of her perpetual cries.

And jher instinct for service hasj never slackened; indeed- it was intensified and developed by the wax, which 'broke out when she was at the most impressionable age, seventeen.

When the Princess was a small girl there was a- fashion for "albums.*? And in dozens of albums probably all thrown away long since, she> used to write in her neat angular hand-writing two quotations. One was Emerson's:

So nigfa* is grandeur to our dust, So nigh is God to man: Wlhen Duty whispers low '' Thou must,' ' The Youth replies "1 can." The other was Tennyson^s: Not once or twice in our rough islandstory,

The path, of duty was the way to glory.

The choice really did express, in an immature kind of way, what has always been the natural impulse oiL our Princess.

Although she probably realised the £tor±or of war as well as any young girl could, it also brought to her, at seventeen, admirable chances for self-

expression. She was not content until "she was allowed to take the two ex- : aminations set by the Order of St. John of Jerusalem for V.A.D. nurses, taking classes with about thirty of her detachment. Then she tried very hard indeed to be allowed to do. something in a hospital for the wounded, even if it were only kitchen work. Apart from any other reason, her" age made this impossible, so she did the next best .tlhing, she became a probationer in the Great Ormond Street Hospital for children and thus released a nurae'-f or duty

overseas.

Tliose women who were left behind in Prance to <<ele^ c .upf/^.|^rill, v 3piever forget that Princess Mary was the first member of the Royal Family to visit France after the Armistioe and express fher appreciation of the work at the various centres.

Her instinct fot service is shown by, the way she has thrown herself enthusiastically into sharing all the interests and occupations of Viscount X*acelles, into caring for ihe health and happiness of her small sons. It make* her, too, so successful a gardener. ~ka the late Lord Lamboume said: <<Ske is fond of gardening for gardening sake." You have only to watch her coaxing a wayward tjpndril (from » creeper into its piaee to Teatoe that.

The illness of the King brought all Princess Mary's best qualities to the fore. She helped Queen. Mary in. c. thousand ways, she hardly left the Palace until the wor&t was over; even

heT, husband and children came, for the time being, second to (her parents, because the latter needed her xooxe.

—"J.W.E." Women's Journal.