“KING WHO SEES, FOR HIMSELF”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 301, 12 March 1928, Page 8

“KING WHO SEES, FOR HIMSELF”

AMANULLAH of Afghanistan, accompanied by his Queen, is to arrive in London on Thursday, and the “King Who Sees foivHimself”—to use one of the titles bestowed upon him by his •subjects—will see many things that he has not yet dreamed of in his philosophy. For the rulers of Britain have decided to accord Amanullah a reception to rival in magnificence any accorded to a ruling monarch by the British nation. Germany entertained Amanullah with the remnants of her former military greatness, goosestepping behind a few dummy tanks, after he had arrived at Berlin in a prosaic railway carriage. The Afghan King will enter England by the front door, crossing the English Channel that is England’s under the escort of British destroyers with the royal salutes from coastal batteries thundering in his royal ears right to the white cliffs of Dover. At that historic port he will be greeted by the Prince of Wales, who will travel with the Afghan royalties to London to present them to King George and Queen Mary. There also will be gathered to greet Amanullah the Prime Minister and other members of the Government; and the heads of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. Escorted by a guard of honour of the famous Grenadiers, the Royal procession will pass through the streets to Buckingham Palace, with London’s teeming millions to line the way. One may imagine the awe with which the dusky monarch will exclaim: “So this is London!” At Bombay, in his Afghan exuberance, he stood up in his car and waved his hat in reply to the salutes of the populace. Doubtless, by now, he has learned to exercise more restraint, and when he is greeted by millions of welcoming Londoners his acknowledgments will be more conventional. There are many other things he will learn in his twenty days’ stay as the guest of Britain, which promises to leave nothing undone for his entertainment and that of his entourage.

King Amanullah, living in the heart of the British Empire, will see something of the might and ma jesty of that Empire : of its greatness in peace, rivalling its power in war; of its force and place in the vast world which the Afghan ruler is only now glimpsing. For until recently Amanullah had never seen the sea or been borne upon a railroad. It was a wise diplomacy that invited this Royal personage to become for a while the guest of the British nation. He rules a great and potentially powerful State which is the buffer between Russia and India, a State hi which Soviet intrigue has been working to undermine British influence and to inflame the Afghan mind against all things British with the most sinister motives. India would easily be infected with the Soviet virus, once it were permitted to permeate Afghanistan, but the visit to England of Afghan’s King may hopefully be calculated to cheek the spread of this poison. Amanullah is a ruler who really rules, and when he has experienced personally the friendship, the dignity, the wealth, the power and the prestige of the mighty British Empire, his reputed sagacity should ensure the friendship of Afghanistan and the baffling of harmful Russian intrigue.