BROTHER OF KINGS.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 February 1921, Page 11

BROTHER OF KINGS.

UNKNOWN BURIED IN THE ABBEY. HISTORIC SERVICE. (By Percival Landon in London Daily Telegraph.) From outside, the pale orange light of a November sun came in through the Abbey windows. Half-clear, half-cloudy, it flooded the long familiar vistas with amber radiance, touching with friendly warmth the clustered pillars, the still banners of gold and re 4 and blue-r—and the quiet length of purple cloth that was stretched upon the grey quarrels of the nave ten yards within the western doors. By some chance of light the color glowed like the purple of the carpet spread years ago from door to high altar on Coronation Day; and in the likeness there was something that seemed to complete one of the greatest days that even the Abbey '’of all abbeys has ever known. For here was to be something rather of high honor than sadness, rather of homage than farewell.

Within that narrow clearance pierced in the middle of the purple cloth was to be laid one who, more perhaps than any other within Its walls, symbolised and stood for the spirit of _ the people who raised the Abbey and built up the tradition which finds there its truest home. Nameless among the resounding names and marble records of 4 those among whom he lies—above him Pitt, at his I left Charles' James Fox—he stands for England as not one of this great assembly could ever stand. Kings a-many are his bed-fellows; yet not a King among them all was ever so simply and truly the representative of the sturdy spirit of this people from one generation to another as is this unknown man. They were all of their time and day. But he stands for all the long centuries of our national life and loyalty, purpose, strength, and faith. He is no product of the last six years. He has always lived in our midst, and, please God, he is not dead to-day. He—just he, and no other —fought with Clive and Wellington; he died with Nelson and with Wolfe: Marl-borough knew him well—and far away beyond the high altar, beyond the Chapel of the Confessor, Henry the Fifth hails him as one of his grim and indomitable company to whom the honor he promised them on the morning of his great fight has at last been rendered,

“For he to-day who sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother.” And as a brother of Kings he was given place in our Abbey yesterday. THE DAY’S SIGNIFICANCE. It is in the word “faith” that the almost terrible- meaning of yesterday’s ceremony is symbolised. This Unknown Warrior sums up«our national faith. In the moment at which all we have and all we are was put to sudden and savage proof our confidence—our utter confidence —was placed in him; and that he and our others were not found, wanting in that great day is the greatest claim we British have ever made or will ever dare to make. There was not one in the Abbey yesterday who did not feel that the hour was charged with a significance to which neither time nor place set bounds. There was a brooding silence in the church—not that indeed which, like a spell lay over the Abbey an hour later, but a quiet that told its tale— nave and aisles, transept and choir fined up before ten o’clock. Not a seat was empty in all those interminable rows; most of those present were mourners of their own lost, of their own missing. It was impossible to help the constant thought that the kin of this unknown man were probably present beside him in this supreme hour. But more, far more insistent was the conviction that the nameless one who was thus going to be laid to rest in the Abbey was in truth the brother of every one of us. In this sense the plangent note of the minute bell struck again across the sunlit spaces of the .great building, and in this sense the band of the Grenadier Guards played us into the mood and meaning of the day.

After Sullivan’s “In Memoriam,” the “Marche Funebre or Chant Seraphique” of Guilmant, master of organists, and Cesar Franck’s “Morceau Symphonique” from “Redemption”’ were given; and then Arthur Somervell’s slow movement from “Killed in Action” preceded the service proper. Arkwright’s “O valiant hearts, who to your glory came,’’was sung by the choir in procession from the western doors, and the lines,

“All you had hoped for, all you had, you gave, « ( To save mankind—yourselves you scorned to save,” bore a double meaning as on the way the Dean of Westminster followed the great Abyssinian cross beside the open grave of the Unknown Warrior. s A PETRIFIED SILENCE. The hymn, “0 God, our Help in ages past” was then sung, and the Lord’s Prayer'ushered in the utter stillness of two minutes’ silence at eleven o’clock. One has heard that such a silence followed the last echoes of the multitudin-ous-barrage fire that ended the great war on the eleventh of November two years ago, but it never was in any church before. Nothing moved from one end of the Abbey to the other. It almost seemed that nothing lived. The writer has from a cathedral tower watched the sudden motionless hush in the streets below that a total eclipse always brings about, but it was as nothing to this petrified silence of honor and obligation to those who during four years had died that we might live to-day. So intense was the stillness that the sudden scrape of some unfortunate worshipper’s chair rang like a shrill trumpet blast through the echoing vaults of the Abbey from end to end. Outside there was the same muted life, broken at last by the dim voice of an officer who scarcely dared to announce, the termination of this vast act of homage, and within the splendid Greek “Contakion” for the departed, which has taken so firm a place in our own liturgy during the last five years, swelled out from the choir After a- few collects the procession was reformed, and the hymn “Brief life is here our portion” was sung until the arrival of the funeral procession at the North Porch of the Abbey, where the body was to be met. Meanwhile the , Queen had arrived at the western door, I and had taken her place on a raised dais - little to the north-west of the open rrave. Her Majesty was accompanied i’,v Queen Alexandra, the Queen of Spain, ;he« Queen of Norway, Princess Mary, Princess Victoria, Princess Beatrice, the Duchess of Albany, the Duchess of Ar-fj-vll. and Princess Maud of Fife. *. The ver sides of the Burial bervice

were chanted, and the head of the returning procession from the North Porch to the grave was sopn,.seen making its way dbwn the centre bf the nave between the double rank of officers and men who had won the Victoria Cross during the war. * The choir took up their places underneath the western wall of the Abbey. The clergy who supported the Dean—on his right the Archbishop of Canterbury and on his left the Rev. L. H. Nixon, the Precentor, and the Bishop of London were the most conspicuous—took up their positions at the same end of the grave. The pall-bearers were ranged on either side of it, soldiers to the south, seamen and airmen to the north. Thus Air-Marshal Sir Hugh Trenchard stood next to the Bishop of London and General Lord Byng of Vimy next to the Archbishop. '

At the other end, three paces advanced upon the • purple cloth, stood the King in khaki, a steady, almost an immovable, figure throughout the ceremony, but giving clear evidence of his grave and intense symapthy with the object of this great celebration, when at the supreme moment Sir Douglas Dawson put into his hand the shell of French earth to be scattered upon the coffin lid. Behind His Majesty stood the Royal Princes. Behind them again was a notable trio —Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Asquith, and the Speaker. Others present included the Earl of Curzon of Kedleston, Viscount Milner, tie Marquis of Salisbury (High Steward of Westminster). Lord Muir Mackenzie (High Bailiff of Westminster) and Mr. E. F. Knapp Fisher (Receiver and Registrar). THE KING’S HOMAGE. The coffin itself was carefully laid to rest by eight Guardsmeji. Upon it were the belt and side-arms’ of a private or non-commissioned officer, the King’s sword and the two wreaths of red and green respectively from the Abbey «taff and from the War Graves (Bureau. And the famous Union Jack was there —its last use before it hangs from the Abbey walls, the best of all symbols of that link between religion and our manhood which carried us through those days of high trial and adversity. After the King had scattered upon the coffin those few handfuls of earth which, in a curious and double sense, make one corner of the Abbey “for ever France,” the hymn TAbide with me” was sung, and the service concluded with two collects. There was a moment’s pause, and then the “Recessional” —never more beautifully associated, never more poignant in its appeal —was given by all, to the sea-tune which has now become almost consecrated to its use—“ Eternal Father.” Beside the grave of this plain man, who did his duty wlien his country needed him, and died in the doing of it, there was no robm for the pettiness that seems inevitable in these narrower days of victory and relaxation; and the hammered refrain of Kipling’s verses, “Lest we forget, lest we forget,” was borne in upon the soul of that great congregation as if it had been the word of the Unknown Warrior himself. Yesterday a wreath was placed on the brows of all those who have, lost a son, or a husband, or a brother, whether dead or missing, in this war. Yesterday we laid no dead fife within the Abbey. If we understood the occasion rightly, we enshrined there our gratitude and our eternal hope; and we dedicated ourselves to further work of the kind this plain' soldier died for. The “Recessional” spoke out yesterday to the audience that perhaps was best able to understand it, and its meaning was not missed.

4 TWO. WOMEN.* The Dean then prounounced the Benediction, and a roll of drums preluded the Reveille with which the service closed. The King was escorted to the western doors .and after the members of the Royal family had driven away, the congregation, one of tl«' most characteristic that ever attended the Abbey service, found its way out —Cabinet Ministers and charwomen, widows and war-work-ers, marshals, magistrates, and merchant princes jostling each other in the doors. That I may justify myself in using the word “charwomen,” a tale may fairlv*end this notice; it was told me by one of the highest Abbey officials. There were two women in one London house—one great London house. Each had had the same loss during the war, and each wanted to come to this ceremony in Westminster Abbey. One was given permission; the other was refused; and she who had been refused congratulated the otjier upon her good fortune with all her heart. And she who had won was the charwoman, and she who had lost was* the owner of the house. There will be much in the next few years which will concern Westminster Abbey. The terrible thought came to one U at this service might, even be the last before the splendid decay of those vaults and walls and columns gives place to the smooth restoration that we all fear in our heart of hearts. But whether this t>e so or no, the King scattered into the grave of that Unknown Warrior yesterday more seed than the mere dust of our friend and Ally, France.

LONDON’S SOLEMN TRIBUTE. HOMAGE FROM ALL CLASSES. When the King had paid his last tribute at the tomb of the Empire’s dead, and passed mournfully on his way, he led a procession of many thousands of his subjects past the grave. The Unknown Warrior, for all his anonymity, lacked no honor that could be shown him bv the mass of the people. Soon after the King and Princes had left the Abbey the people were admitted and thereafter well on into the evening there filed past the remains a silent, respectful, seemingly endless throng, intent on gaining, in the manner of true mourners, one last glimpse of the resting-place of the dead. Many of them had. spent the greater portion of the day in the various queues which were in being early, in preparation for the public’s admittance to the Abbey. Soon after daybreak did some of the women, dreading some untoward happening that would baulk their desire, take up a place just outside one or other of the barriers erected at the. northern end of Whitehall. They were reinforced by parties of two and three as the morning brightened until after breakfast were drawn up the heads of the processions that later lengthened simultaneously m three directions, from Charing-cross up St. Martin’s-lane, down Northumberiandavenue. and along Cockspur-street. The great, occasions which London has seen in all chequered centuries of its career, ran surely have produced before no such gathering in Which nil were mixed with such total effacement of creed and class, the West-end, suburbia, and the East were apparently represented in their due proportions. There were soldiers, sailors, and airmen, busiI nuss men and clergymen, men in then working slothe*, and Sower-sellers wao

joined in after disposing of their wares I higher up in the queue, but women were i throughout, as on all such occasions, in a vast majority. AN ALL-DAY PILGRIMAGE. • It had been the intention of the! authorities to admit the people to thej Abbey at two o’clock, but so great was, the crowd without the barriers that ini the interests of time arrangements were. pushed on, and the doors were thrown 1 open at a quarter to one Down Whitehall filed the long procession, the women' placing their' flowers at the front of the Cenotaph as they passed, and then into,, the Abbey by the new north 'door. The* queue moved solidly, as it vrere r at a regular pace of something over a mile an hour, the police at points of difficulty giving a word of expert advice as occasion required. The arangeinents were wonderfully adequate throughout, and confusion accordingly was avoided. I Thanks to the system of barriers, Par-liament-square was deserted save for a few authorised persons, and the queue passed into the Abbey without any cross , streams of traffic to stay its progress. It passed four deep through the north choir and turned down the nave towards the .‘western door. |At the V-shaped barrier before the grave the column parted and swept ‘two deep on either side,constables being posted at each flank to . counteract the inevitable tendency to pause as the graveside was reached. This at first sight might seem rather hard on the individual who had spent a weary day in anticipation of a moment’s compensating reflection inside, but it was an eminently necessary precaution in view of the many thousands still awaiting their turn. Their stay in the Abbey, however brief it had proved to be was calculated to leave lasting memories of an historic picture. But for the orderly unobtrusive flow of the black-robed mourners there was nothing to break the atmosphere ’of perfect repose within, there was nothing at all of the austere in its composition; shafts of mellow-tinted light swept down the misty heights of the nave, until they were dimmed in the purple radiance of the flooring about the graveside. The magnificent Abbey pall of cream and gold and the I nion Jack which enveloped the coffin on its way from France wore rich notes of triumphant color, but all else was restful to the eye in a wonderful effect of contrast. The three laurel wreaths above the coffin, the King’s garland, with its deep crimson blossom, the Abbey wreath, and the circlet from Ypres, were appropriate in their simplicity. From the pillars at hand depended a maps of flowers, forwarded, on behalf the French and British armies, the Army of Occupation, while at the foot of the grave lay the tributes sent by the Abbey congregation. At the head of the Unknown Warrior stood erect the, ultimate'symbol of the Christian faith'in the shape of the Abbey’s Abyssinian Cross, which it received at the time of the Coronation'of King Edward Vll. From time to time the silence was broken by the whispered orders of a corporal of the Guards, who brought the four relief sentries, to take their stand, two at Hie head and two at the foot of the grave. They were finely-proportioned men, one «ach from the Navy, the Marines, the Army, and the Air Force. Changing guard at the slope, the new sentry would first present armfe in salute, and then, reversing solemnly sink into the appropriate posture of mourning. Once one of the men failed beneath the no mean strain of the half-hour’s guard, and had to receive attention from the ambulance corps who were on duty in the Abbey.