HISTORIC MEETING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 June 1939, Page 5

HISTORIC MEETING

KING AND PRESIDENT WASHINGTON RECEPTION. RECORD CROWDS LINE STREETS. (Received This Day, 9.30 a.m.) WASHINGTON, June 8. Hands which so long have been figuratively clasped across the sea, met in actuality today when the King and President Roosevelt met in a small reception room at the railway station. The historic meeting was intimate and friendly, only the King and Queen, the President and Mrs Roosevelt, officials and the President’s family being present. The British Ambassador. Sir Ronald Lindsay, and the American Secretary of State, Mr Cordell Hull, conducted their Majesties to the reception room immediately the train arrived. The King was wearing the full dress uniform of an Admiral of the Fleet, while the Queen wore an ensemble of powdered mauve with a crepe l coat, cuffs trimmed to match, and a fox fur. Their Majesties chatted with President and Mrs Roosevelt for twenty minutes and then emerged to their cars, which were escorted by cavalrymen, artillerymen and fifty tanks. A record crowd massed the streets on the way to the White House.

PILOT DROPPED

ENGINE DEVELOPS HOT AXLE. CORRESPONDENTS OUT OF RUNNING. (Received This Day, 10.25 a.m.) BALTIMORE (Maryland), June 8. For the first time for 8.000 miles, the Royal train travelled without a pilot today. A hot axle box stopped the pilot train 85 miles north of Harrisburg. The Royal train continued for some distance alone. Then another locomotive was pressed into service for the pilot train. After 90 minutes’ delay the pilot, with a hundred international correspondents on board began a 75 miles an hour attempt to overtake the Royal train, and was everywhere greeted by the massed crowds, who. as the pilot was the second, thought it was the Royal train.

Their Majesties’ arrival at Washington was not witnessed by the international correspondents, as the pilot failed to overtake the Royal train.