The Crown

P:One morning last week ornate Buckingham Palace guardsmen raised their chins at a sound louder than the blare of their brass band which was just thumping out a change of the guard. Through a low-hanging cloud, with his motor back firing like a machine gun, slithered Flying Officer F. Smith's plane, falling directly toward the Palace. To Airman Smith the royal standard fluttering on Buckingham's staff showed that the King-Emperor was in residence. By desperate maneuvers Flying Officer Smith was barely able to lift his plane over the Palace roof and miss the flagstaff by inches as spectators screamed and scattered. "God save the King!" gasped a pink-cheeked old lady in a black bonnet as Air man Smith disappeared, his backfiring motor carrying him over Marble Arch to plunk down safely in Hyde Park. Said the King, according to Palace officials: "I saw it from a window. I thought it would crash either on the roof or in the courtyard." P:Day before, hard by Marble Arch, Their Majesties inspected London's new est luxury hotel, The Cumberland, which opened last week boasting 1,000 air-conditioned bedrooms.* To save George V from death by pneumonia his Bucking ham bedroom was air-conditioned at a cost of -L-3,000 during one of London's persistent winter fogs (TIME, Dec. 17, 1928). P:George V hunched forward in his seat, Queen Mary raised her lorgnette with approving interest. On the stage of the Drury Lane Theatre at a command performance for the King's pension fund for British stage folk, blonde U. S. Actress Claire Luce and Dancer Fred Astaire. brother of Lady Charles Cavendish, were doing their light-footed, rubber-hipped dance from the musicomedy Gay Divorce. P:Arrested three weeks ago for "uttering, knowing the contents thereof to be false, a letter demanding money from the King, with menaces," one Clarence Guy Gordon-Haddon, 43, unemployed engineer and War veteran, was committed for trial in Old Bailey court last week by a reluctant Crown.

Mr. Gordon-Haddon could be and was ignored for years while he wrote letters to Their Majesties and to every public man in England claiming to be the natural son of George V's elder brother, the late Duke of Clarence. He was arrested only when he "menaced" George V as follows: "I am having made sandwich boards, giving the particulars of my case. I shall personally carry those boards about the streets of London in an attempt to secure Justice. I would be satisfied with enough money to start a modern boarding house."

Pleading "not guilty" last week Claimant Gordon-Haddon plaintively remarked: "I never had any criminal intention," was released in -L-100 bail. P:To the crew of the London, Midland & Scottish Railway's sample Royal Scot express train which last summer steamed around Canada and the U. S. and was exhibited at Chicago's Century of Progress (TIME, May 22), George V sent written congratulations which were read last week by L. M. S. Chairman Sir Josiah Stamp as the far-wandering Scot steamed into Euston Station.

*During the London Economic Conference, convened amid sweltering June heat, certain southern stenographers of the U. S. Delegation made British hotel men tear their hair by installing electric radiant heaters in the Delegation's air-conditioned quarters at Claridge's.

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