QUESTION OF RANK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 October 1938, Page 10

QUESTION OF RANK

PROBLEM FOR MRS ROOSEVELT

IN EVENT OF BRITISH ROYAL VISIT CURTSY OR CUSTOMARY GREETING By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. WASHINGTON, October 11. ‘‘lf Their Majesties visit the White House, should Mrs Roosevelt curtsy to them?” However flimsy may be the foundation of the report of their impending visit, this is the question of the hour- for society here. Interrogated at a Press conference,, Mrs Roosevelt said that she knew nothing about a proposed visit and nothing regarding the etiquette of entertaining Royalty. “I guess I will do whatever the Protocal Division of the State Department instructs me,” she said. The protocal experts, after this, declined to rule on the question until it was officially presented, but the “New York Herald-Tribune’s” Washington correspondent reprted that the concensus of opinion was that to use the customary American forms of social greeting would be the thing to do instead of curtsying. The fact that Madame Lebrun, wife of the French President, curtsied to Their Majesties last summer in Paris is not regarded as establishing a precedent, most experts holding that the wife of the President of the United States is of equal rank to the heads of other Governments.