The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, July 30, 1910. THE FRENCH AND KING EDWARD.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 872, 30 July 1910, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, July 30, 1910. THE FRENCH AND KING EDWARD.

A recent cable stated that Paris intends naming a new street “Edouard Vll,’’ and will erect an equestrian statue in memory of Britain’s late King. Mr Charles Wilson, commenting on the above in the N.Z. Times says : “The cabled decision of, I suppose, the Counseil Municipal of Paris, to name a street atter the late King Edward VII., and to erect an equestrian statue of that monarch, is no small compliment to British Royalty and the British nation. For the Conseil Municipal of today is an almost ferociously Radical body, which has but scant respect for Royalty. Circumstances, however, alter cases, and even with the reddest of French “red Radicals” King Edward was ever a favourite

King Edward’s popularity really began in 1878, when as Son Altesse le Prince de Galles. otherwise H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, be was President of the British Commission, and took a personal and most intimate interest in the arrangement of the British section at the Exhibition. The Parisians made much of him. The band in the Tuileries gardens played “God Save the Prince of Wales” at every other performance. The shops were full of cravats —awful things—“as worn by the Prince of Wales” —cakes of soap bearing his image, and so forth, and one famous chocolate shop in the Passage Jouffroy had little chocolate figures ot Son Altesse. The “Figaro” called him “Ce bon garcon,” the bourgeois shopkeepers belauded over their cafes and petits verres “ce gros bonhomme anglais ; ” in a word, all the ancient perfidy of Albion was forgotten or forgiven because of the presence—for many weeks —of the good-natured, handsome English Prince, who spoke the French of Paris and not of Stratford .atte Bowe, and who was declared to possess “le vrai esprit parisien.” But even had any member of the Conseii Municipal been audacious enough to propose that a street should have been named after an English Prince or King, I verily believe he would have been carted off instantly to Charenton (tht Parisian variant of “Porirua !”), or denounced as a traitor. Edward, Prince and King, continued to visit Paris, sometimes in his Princely or Kingly capacity, at others merely as a quiet sojourner at the “Comte de Lancastre,” at the Hotel Bristol, in the Place Vendome. He liked a French play, he enjoyed a “day off” at the Anteuil or Chantilly races, and the Third Republic, and especially Paris, took him to its heart and kept him there, which for the proverbiallv volatile and changeable Frenchman, was quite an achievement. He is credited with having done more than any other man to bring about the entente cordiale, of which we have heard and read so much, and Paris which rakes in annually many scores, nay hundreds of thousands, of good British sovereigns (of the minted variety) spent within her hospitable borders by John Bull and his wife, his sons, daughters, sisters, cousins, and aunts, is, after all, only exhibiting a little common gratitude in doing honour to his name, and perpetuating what is for all good Parisians, his genial and jovial memory. In the past the names of many Parisian streets have been changed, as Republic succeeded Kingdom, or Empire Republic, or, yet again, Republic Empire. Eet us trust that once “ La Rue Edouard VII.” exists, it may exist so long as there is a city on the banks of the Seine ; the city which our dead King loved so well, and whose people, indirectly, he did so much.