Monday, Nov. 17, 1930
Honi Soit . . .
For every knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter there is a banner hanging and a plaque screwed up in St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. After nine years of restoration, at a cost of more than $1.000.000 (much of it supplied by U. S. Anglophiles), this No. i shrine of British chivalry was re-opened last week in the presence of George V and The Lady of the Garter (Queen Mary).
Sir Austen Chamberlain, the only Knight of the Garter to win the Nobel Peace Prize (TIME, Dec. 20, 1926) and the only K. G. who is not a peer, sat with the crimson-&-blue-robed Knights who boast themselves "the oldest order of knighthood in the world."
As this was not a Chapter (formal meeting) of the Order of the Garter, George V and Edward of Wales wore ordinary morning dress instead of gorgeous Garter robes, but the clergy of the Order came robed and resplendent, each churchman displaying the famed motto: Honi soit qui mal y pense (Evil be to him who evil thinks).
James Ramsay MacDonald, though not a K. G., sat, by right of his Prime Ministry, in a stall next to that once occupied by onetime Knight Wilhelm II of Germany. Keen eyes observed that during the $1,000.000 restoration the banner of the All Highest War Lord was indeed removed, but his plaque remains, still tightly screwed in place.
Short and simple, the reopening service was without sermon, consisted chiefly of a prayer by patriarchal Dean Albert Victor Baillie of Windsor for the "Sovereign and His Companions of the Garter."
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