THE REAL PRINCE.

Shannon News, 24 December 1925, Page 2

THE REAL PRINCE.

QUESTION OF MARRIAGE. AN INTIMATE PERSONAE IMPRESSION. ( p.y Sidney Brooks, in the “Sunday Clironicle.”) The Pi'inca of Wales's return brings him to a decisive phase'of his life. The war absorbed him from 1914 to 1918. For the past six years he has been almost incessantly on tlic move, and the Empire and foreign lands have really seen more of him than his own country. The phase he enters upon now is one of settling down in. his own land among his own people. Put. -svhat experiences, what a multitudinous panorama of scenes, what an incredible. variety of life lias he not known and witnessed and imbibed in the past ine years! Since, he kicked over the ‘..races at the beginning of the war and insisted —there is no othei word for • it—against Kitchener, against Buckingham Palace. and against Whitehall on going; to the front and being all ached to a fighting division he has seen life and death, the world and the Empire, peril and pleasure under every guise and at the shortest range. No Chocolate Soldier,

Oddly enough, only this morning, when 1 was meditating on this article, an officer friend recalled those old days at Loos and on the Somme — now the. Prince refused to be caged up at headquarters, how he took his f urns of duty in the trenches. and how cuoiy and competently, without a touch 'of bravado, he carried on at more than one hot corner. But rhat would be like him: He could not be a chocolate soldier.amy more than he could be a prig or a milksop. But still less could he swagger or advertise himself.

I suppose in a sense the Prince is -tiil, ns lie was then, at war with his ■coition. Here is a man with a great appetite for life. He. likes to mingle with the enticing world around him at ■every wholesome point of sport and But being the Prince of Wales he is not a free agent. He cannot always iniulged his lieaty human inclinations. His life has in it far more prohiblions than privileges and far more | duties than relaxations. Pride In the Empire. . What enormously has helped the Prince to accept ami observe the restrictions, the boredom, the monotonous routine grind of his position is his discovery of the Empire and of his own power to serve it. That is a cause which enlists every capacity, every emotion, every aspiration he possesses. There cam... to him during- the war, and there' has been confirmed in him •since by his tours in India. Australasia, South- Africa, and Canada, a firm and fervent pride in the British stock and the British mission. And to that has boon added the realisation ;: st Ui:tl for muU’t'Jdes of people fate Iras made him the' chief representative of tlie British name, the man by whom his. country and his people .are to b c judged, and that it is for him to conduct bimseil accordingly ;and -ecoMuiy, that flu re. have been entrusted to him some gifts of personality, some powers of winning- interest and affection that wherever he displays .them 'strengthen the Empire, strengthen the Crown, and make for a fuller unity between Great Britain and Greater Britain. ■Opportunity For Service. ' «i.st tiio Prince is probably the last j man in the Empire either to know j or to care. But an outsider has not I much difficulty in resolving- the reason | for the Prince's universal popularity. I They are to bo found in that frank . ami -steady y .inc •:•(' _ his, the honest open face in which a natural shyness . still druggies with, maturity and ex- . perience, his whole buoyant ait- oi freshness and vitality, the unforced, irresistible smile, the impossibility feltat first glance and never afterwards questioned of associating- him with anything mean or pretentions or Crooked. For the Prince himself the acclaim that everywhere greets him - probably constitutes oi) c vast bewildering- fact — iK-viklerbig, but bracing. He cannot I but be a ware that it makes him an Imperial asset of the very first order, and that these, tours of his, exhausii. ns they are, represent, the best service that he. or any man can render to the Empire. .1 shonid say mat d.v uoav it has not only reconciled him to his position as Hcir-Appo.rent, but has invested that position with a meaning and with openings for usefulness that in his early youth lie hardly suspected. After all, it is not hard for a Prince to be popular. In the case of the : Pt-ine... of Wales I should not set so I much store by it bill for two things 1 The first is that on the few occasions .whrni .1 have mot him I have instinc- ! lively liked and trusted him. lie ■ 1 ruck, me as rinsing true. Ho looked ht, he spoke some:, there was a plcnti. ful play of honour about. him, and no m:m could bo more free from airs or -. hm-el-iners, Hut [ have another reason apart from ray personal impressions for regarding the Prince’s popularity with til'.- public, and all sort sof publics, as being just, fully earned, inevitable. It is that he is equally popular with Iris pfaff, with the men who sec him in undress, who servo under him and know him in all the revealing- intimacies o idaily life. They fairly worship him.

And now ho is home again. But ho return?, T fear, a rather tired man. . If over a man had earned the li-.ht lo ho lot, alone lor a few months it is the Prince. A period of quiet hunting, quiet shooting, and quiet visits to country houses, with a 'minimum ol public functions and speeches, would bo the best of all gifts that the nation could offer him. 1 take, it the Prince himself is quite

I aware of what the nation would most I [ike him to do. It would like hiin to [fall in in love and , marry. J 11: does not in the least desire him I to “contract an allience” for reasons jof State. But for his oven happiness I it cannot help hoping that he will soon I have a wife by his side! and, barring actresses, divorcees, and Americans, it sets no limitations on his choice. So long as it was a love match the country would be well content. ■ But such things do not come to order or by volition, and the Prince has sufficiently indicated that- he means in this matter to take his own line and choose his oivn time. So much the better, and so much the more interesting does his first prolonged stay in these islands during the past {.on years promise to be.