THE ROYAL FAMILY

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3787, 3 May 1928, Page 4

THE ROYAL FAMILY

The reader of Queen Victoria’s letters is “forced to realise how completely the English Royal Family has changed its functions since those Victorian days” says Mr. Hugh Walpole, in a letter to the New York Herald Tribune. “These functions are, I imagine, to most .Americans quite inexplicable. If members of the Royal Family interfere with national politics, as Queen Victoria most certainly did, then, say my American friends, they are usurping the duties and responsibilities of democratic government; if they do not interfere of what use are they? Why waste money maintaining them? How can we, a nation paying larger income tax than any other country in the world, afford so empty a luxury? Wlell, the answer is that our Royal Family do not any longer usurp any political functions whatever and Jhat they are at present more generally popular than at any time in man’s memory. Mr. Arnold Bennett the other day, after Hardy’s funeral, wrote a letter to a daily newspaper accusing the Royal Family of indifference to the arts because no one of them was present at the ceremony. It was interesting to notice how people of every class and kind threw themselves into the breach defending Royalty, saying that Arnold Bennett knew nothing a’hjbut it and that he was guilty of gross impertinence. Quite unexpectedly people became quite heated over the question in a way they would never have done twenty years ago. There is no doubt that, since the war, the Royal Family has been filling a most important place in holding classes and parties, together, in emphasising a kind of day by day patriotism and in showing that it is possible to do your duty in England and for England without surrendering to party bitterness and local jealousies.” .