How the King Reads his Newspapers

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 38, 21 September 1905, Page 13

How the King Reads his Newspapers

The press of Great Britain has a good friend in lung Edward. Nobody is more appreciative of the) diffciliies under which the great newspapers are produced, or of the lemarkable le\el of excellence to which they attain, than his Majesty, and he ha£ frequently gone i out of his way to give some expression of his senti-

ments in Ibis matter. At the close of his Majesty's great tour thorough Ireland a little while back, when, he was accompanied at a respectful distance by as many newspaper correspondents as would be sent out to a big war, tflie King took the exceptional course of sending a message out to the delighted journalists, saying that; he had read most of their special accounts, or at least as many of them as he could, and was greatly pleased with the way in which the work had been done. There appears also to be in modern times.only one occasion on which the Sovereign has publicly used the press (flor Ms personal convenience, and this ) wjas by King Edward in September of last year, when he thus showed his ' realisation of the value of the press as> the surest and speediest vehicle for the transmission of a message to his people. His Majesty had just been to Doncaster races, where he had been accorded a specially enthusiastic reception, and when he came back to London again he sent the following message to the newspapers : ' The King desires that it should be made known through the press how grateful he was for the splendid reception ho received; at Doncaster.' Th,is was a small thing in its way, hut it marked an epoch. His Majesty is a Great Newspaper Reader, and even an up-to<date journalist would ha\e difficulty in exhibiting greater knowledge of the salient features not only the English papers, tout of those of the Continent 'also. He can tell you the names of vho daily papers published in all the big towns and cities of the Continent, and in must cases the details of their policy and the names of the editors. When in England he goes thTou'g'h at least one daily paper every morning, often through several, and frequently a Continental journal is submitted to a short scrutiny. He is usually attracted by special articles concerning himself and his doings, and he rarely fails to read the report of any really 'big political speech which has been delivered the night before. The King always tries to make certain of never missing seeing anything in the papers which he thinks he ought to see, either about himself or about any of the nummms objects and movements in which he is interested, such as different chanties, the usits to him of his foreign friends, and so forth. It would, however, be plainly difficult for either him on his secretaries to make a sufficiently close examination of the whole of the press every day to ensure this bfeing done with any degree of 'thoroughness and therefore his Majesty many years ago resorted to the great Press-cutting agencies for assistance. He subscribes to two of them, and they send him in the usual/ wiaiy cadi day e\ery line of printed matttetf that has appeared in any paper concerning him, each pai digraph or article being pasted upon a separate sheet of paper with the name of the journal from which it was taken and the date of publication All these cuttings an- glanced through by his secretaries, the less important weeded out, and those which it is considered his Maicsty ouc;ht to see are duly shown to him. The King keeps many large cutting albums, and whenever he desires -to preserve any of these extracts orders are gi\cn for them to be pasted up in one of them.