KING OF ENGLAND

Radio Record, Volume IX, Issue 15, 18 October 1935, Page 5

KING OF ENGLAND

EXT week IYA presents a programme entitled "Highlights on the Silver Jubilee Celebrations of his Majesty, King George the Fifth." This programme will arouse in New Zealand people an even greater feeling of love and trust in'a maa who is great, not because he is imbued with any of the ambitions of a Napoleon or a Mussolini, but because he is a characteristic example of the great British middle class. The fol-. lowing are a few extracts from a recent article in ‘"‘Fortune," the American monthly, entitled "The King of England": . George V is successful because he is the king for whom the British constitution has been waiting from its earliest days, The British constitution requires a king who shall "reign but not govern." Its fundamental principle is that of ministerial responsibility... .To place an ambitious man of strong intellectual passions in such a position would obviously be to invite disaster. Hither a Napoleon or a Jefferson on the British throne would destroy the throne and himself. _ Nothing that has ever been said of him has disturbed more than the occasional statement that he is a foreigner. During the war one of his Ministers found him throwing a book upon the floor in a sailor’s rage. "‘That’s not fair," he said. The. Minister picked up the book, Wells’s "Mr. Britling Sees It Through," and the King’s finger pointed to a statement about England stumblin blindly along under an uninspiring and alien Court. "TI know I’m uninspiring," shouted the King, "but I’m everlastingly damned if I’m an alien." And he was right, . He still: has a trick of talking at the top of his voice like a man,‘conversing in.a high wind, and still has a fondness for language which: his biographers unctuously describe’ as "honest sailor talk" or "innocent oaths of the sea." There is a taste of..salt in the testiness of many of his sayings, such-as the famous rebuke to Lord Derby, who was so rash as to visit Buckingham Palace in trousers with turned-up cuffs, a tailor’s trick detested by his sovereign :: "I did not know," barked the King, "that the corridors of my palace. were muddy." ... George V has never attempted to be a "ruler" and he needs no such attribute. Few monarchs have ever so enjoyed the human love of their people. Even in Canada and Australia the King’s illness, and more recently the Silve: Jubilee, let loose a flood of sentiment. The basis of that affection is not George’s regality as a monarch, but his simplicity as a man...