The Crown

With Edward of Wales safe home from Africa and "present in the Kingdom," as head of the Crown Council, the Empire waited, last week, for Death to strike George V or pass him by. Whatever the event there would be no slightest break in that splendrous super-human continuity which endures, not the King but the Crown.

P: For the first time during His Majesty's 28 days abed a knife was applied, last week, to the royal person. Anesthesia preceding the operation was daringly carried out by Dr. Francis Shipway.

The slender, dexterous, rubber gloved hands of Sir Hugh Rigby applied the knife. Swiftly he pierced between two ribs, pierced further, and introduced a drainage tube into a festering pus pocket, in the lower section of the right lung, which had been exuding poison into the blood royal.

Without X-ray the pus pocket could not have been located and Death would have been certain.' As the poison drained off and the King-Emperor stirred, awakening from the anesthesia, a sympathetic world gasped at his improvement as though at a miracle.

P: During the week Her Majesty the Queen and Empress Mary unveiled a war memorial, spoke over the radio for the first time in her life. Complete speech: "To the glory of God and in honor of these brave men I unveil this memorial on behalf of .those for whom they died."

P: His Royal Highness, officially the "High and Mighty Prince of Wales," resided during the week at York House, his modest bachelor suite in a wing of St. James Palace.

Day and night a motor car and relays of chauffeurs were kept at the disposal of the Prince. Though refusing all public engagements and most private, H.R.H. kept himself in trim by a daily game of squash racquets with the Duke of York at the Royal Automobile Club. As head of the Regency Council the "High and Mighty Prince" acted pro-tempore with the authority of King and Emperor--except that he did not possess the power of creating Peers, dubbing Knights.

P: In Manhattan, rich Brigadier General and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt entertained last week His Royal Highness Prince George, youngest son of George V, prior to his sailing on the Cunarder Berengaria for Southampton, home.

Over the regular trans-Atlantic telephone Prince George talked from Manhattan with Queen Mary. Later he peered from the top of the Woolworth building, sat down to dine at 8:30 in the Vanderbilt mansion, slipped out at 10:15 to catch his ship.

P: The only daughter of George V, Princess Mary, Viscountess Lascelles, was observed to laugh uncontrollably at the really excruciating antics of two clowns at a Christmas benefit which she charitably attended.

P: Addressing the 1917 Club, onetime Labor Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald said in London last week: "The sympathy we Laborites feel isn't sycophancy at all. Those of us who have had the great pleasure of knowing the King personally, feel, at a moment like this, how extraordinarily well and absolutely impartially he has done his work."

P: Prayers were constantly offered in Westminster Abbey not only for the King but for his doctors, nurses. A silent prayer by a group of British marines was impressively led, in London, by James Joseph Tunney.

P: Persons permitted to have audience with Her Royal Highness, Princess Elizabeth, aged 2, only granddaughter of George V, were told by chubby, lisping "Baby Betty" that: "Lyllybet can not see Gwampa anymore. Gwampa has bad cold."

P: Rear Admiral Hugh Rodman, U. S. N., retired, told at Washington last week of a minute courtesy inspection of the U. S. war boat New York made by George V during the War. Said Admiral Rodman:

"His Majesty inspected even the engine room and the fire room. Then when I recalled to him an incident I had heard of a fast trip he had once made on a British cruiser out of Halifax, when he had himself shoveled some coal into the furnace, he at once did the same for the New York, laughingly throwing in several shovels full of coal.

"He was always most affable and very cordial and it was always very easy and a great pleasure to talk to him."

P: Such recollections of His Majesty as the above served to endear this diligent and noble king still further to the peoples of the world. It was with universal uneasiness and sorrow that humans received the news that another new pus pocket was forming near the royal heart and pressing upon it. Surgery, the new art of ray-therapy, and the often neglected old therapy of massage were mobilized to save His Majesty. Even after 28 days the stout heart beat regularly on and the constitution, though showing signs of exhaustion, retained sufficient robustness to give hope.

In 1920 Enrico Caruso weathered a malady similar in kind and gravity to that afflicting King George. Caruso recovered in Manhattan, lived to cross the ocean again; and, in 1921, met Death in blithe, sunny Naples.