ALWAYS FRIENDS.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 May 1922, Page 5

ALWAYS FRIENDS.

FRANCE AND ENGLAND. VISIT OF THE KING. TOUCHING SCENES By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. Received Mlay 14, 5.5 p.m. Paris, May 13. When touring the Ypres battlefields, King George stopped for some time at the grave of an Australian, Sergeant McGee, a posthumous V.C. He reached Arras on Friday, and motored to Notre Dame Delorette Plateau, where a hundred thousand Frenchmen fell in a battle lasting a year, and where a memorial with a lighted lantern is to keep perpetual vigil. The King met Marshal Foch there, and visited several cemeteries, depositing wreaths of red laurels. He also visited Vimy Ridge, which the Canadians captured, where he met the Canadian High Commissioner and Mr. Kipling. While at Lorette the King listened eagerly to Marshal Foch and Lord Haig describing various famous points and explaining details of the stupendous battle. He turned to them once, confidently saying, in French: “Toujours, bon amis, n’est ce pas?” (“Is it not that we are always good friends?”). Marshal Foch replied with fervour: “Toujours, toujours, pour les memes choses et les memes raisons.” (“Always! Always! For the same purposes and for the same reasons”). He grasped Lord Haig’s hand., and as the two Marshals held hands in a grip of comradeship, the King placed his hand over theirs. The scene was worthy of record by a great painter—on a hillside scarred with graves and overlooking devastated France, the British King sealing the comradeship of two great war leaders made an historic scene.

The King and Queen visited the Terline thun cemetery, which concluded their tour of the battlefields. The King delivered an oration, including a message to the war bereaved. He said: “For the past few days I have been making a solemn pilgrimage in honor of the people who died for all free men. I should like to send a message to all who lost those dear to them in the Great War, and in this the Queen joins me. Amid surroundings so wonderfully typical of that single-hearted assembly of nations and races forming our Empire, for ever in their last quarters lie the sons of every portion of that Empire across, as it were, the threshold of the Mother Island which they guarded that freedom might be saved in the uttermost ends of the earth. The generation of our manhood offered itself without question, almost without need, in answer to the summons. We may truly say the whole circuit of the earth is girdled with the graves of our dead.” The King’s visit to Etaples cemetery, where Ibere are ten thousand British graves, was marked by a touching incident. A letter from an Englishwoman was handed to the King, in which the writer begged the Queen to place a few forget-me-nots on the grave of her son. The King, in the absence of the Queen, reverently bore the flowers to the graveside. where he knelt down and placed them at the foot of the tomb and gave instructions that the flowers be specially tended and left undisturbed. The King was received at the entrance of the cemetery by Sir Allen Hogben and others. The King and Queen have returned to London, and were enthusiastically welcomed by crowds during their drive to Buckingham Palace. —Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn. _ Paris, May 12.

The Gaulois states that M. Millerand, President of France, asked King George if he woul’ like him to accompany His Majesty to the French devastated regions and British soldiers graves. ° The King replied that, while greatly touched by M. Millerand’s offer, it seemed to him better the preserve the intimate character of the visit and the strictly military homage attaching thereto.