WHEN THE PRINCE WEDS

Hokitika Guardian, 15 December 1920, Page 1

WHEN THE PRINCE WEDS

LONDON, Oct. 1C The following is a reprint of the first leading article in The Times yesterday: The keenest public interest centres round the Prince of Wales; and though there is the strongest desire to respect his privacy, the public watch him with almost parental anxiety. Everywhere fervent wishes for his health and prosr perity are the staple of conversation. It would he strange if the topic of his marriage were not very olten on the lips and near to the hearts of his countrymen and countrywomen. He is 2G, and the marriage of the Prince of Wales is inevitably a matter of deep public concern. We desire to speak of it' with proper reticence, expressing, within these bounds; what we believe to lie the real anxiety of the country that' he should make a wise chuice.The war, in this as in most other things has, we believe, wrought a great change in public opinion,' which —here and elsewhere in the Empire would, we are convinced, he strongly averse from tlie thought that there .should be any compulsion upon the Prince of Wales to make a marriage of policy. For him, within the comparatively narrow limits that his position must impose upon him, the British peoples, would wish a marriage of true happiness; and this, it is our way to believe, means a marriage of inclination. It follows naturally that the hope for him is that his wife may he one of Ins own race ; for though there have been fortunate exceptions, it is certainly true that marriages of policy with princesses of foreign birth have not always had the primary condition for happiness. Further than to give expression to this national wish for the Prince we shall not go, adding only that we doubt whether there is now the need that there’may have been before tlie war to limit the choice of the Prince to the circle of the Blood Royal.