Brother of Moon and Tide-Arbiter

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 846, 14 December 1929, Page 22

Brother of Moon and Tide-Arbiter

Siam’s Ruler and Some Grandiloquent Titles Yellow - garmented Buddhist priests chanted prayers, thumbed beads, whirred carven prayerwheels. They and all Siam, especially Royal Bangkok, mourned the death o£ a young medical interne at the American Mission Hospital. No ordinary student he, but a superlatively intelligent one, for he came from a superlatively intelligent house and was none other than Somdet Chao Fa (Prince Mahidol Adulyadej, brother of the King of Siam, heir-presumptive to the throne, Harvard graduate. Despite the death of the heir-pre-sumptive (says the Bangkok representative of “Time”), and the fact that the present King Prajadhipok is without a son, as was his elder brother, King Rama VI., the Siamese throne will not lack for a successor. The late benevolent and fruitful Rama V., father of these three, stocked Siam with royalty to come. He is generally credited with 370 children: 236 girls and 134 boys. Of these 10, beside the present King and the prince who died, are in the line of succession. King' Queen and princess paused to mourn

the death of the heir-presumptive, but not for long. They are workers. Smiling Prajadhipok puts all his brothers to work. Between them they divide up nearly all the Government offices. The prince, whose small body was recently anointed for the grave, had most efficiently conducted the Siamese Ministry of Health before he took up medical studies. Only recently the King on a visit to Northern rural Siam had admonished his relatives as follows: “In my own family the princes who have no capacity and no ability have nothing to do with the Government service. I therefore take th° opportunity of advising that you who arfe fortunate to be in this honourable family should in the future try- to better yourselves by special qualifications.”

And they obeyed, aware that brother Prajadhipok is, officially, King of Siam of the North and of the South, of all. the Dependencies, of the Laotians, of the Malays, of the Karens, descendant of the great God Buddha.’ Supreme Arbiter of the Ebb and Flow of-the Tide, Brother of the Moon, HalfBrother of the Sun, Possessor of the Four and Twenty Golden Umbrellas.