Royalty

Among the bulletins that were issued last week from Craigwell House, Bognor, where the King-Emperor rests after his illness, was one over the signatures of Lord Dawson of Penn and Sir Stanley Hewett, His Majesty's Chief Physicians. Innocent sounding enough, it was secretly carried to London, and submitted to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and the Prince of Wales before being published.

"The King," said the bulletin, "is now able to read and apply his mind for short periods of time. Complete recovery is still some months distant."

Thus for the first time official cognizance was taken of the King's mental state, a subject that has been worrying official circles for the past month. The King's physical improvement is all that could be expected. He eats and sleeps well. He walks, leaning heavily on two nurses, from one room to another, and sits by an open window for hours, watching the horses exercise on Bognor sands. But he does not seem able to concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes. It was said that this is the reason the Prince of Wales has paid only one visit to Craigwell House.

"The best time in the King's day," said an unofficial despatch from London, "is usually just after six in the evening. In the best periods the King realizes his weakness and insists on being treated as an extreme invalid. In his other moods, however, he does not recognize the situation and expects to be treated as a well person, which increases the difficulties of the doctors and nurses,"

The fact that it is absolutely impossible to tell whether the King's mind will completely recover or not makes the general anxiety the more acute. All his most personal belongings have been taken to Craigwell House to help him recover: his famed stamp albums, his collection of gramophone records, most of them jazz tunes, his terrier, and Charlotte, the parrot.

P: U.S. debutantes and others who will don white gloves, pin three feathers in their hair and go to Buckingham Palace this Spring, will make their bows to Queen Mary alone, the Lord Chamberlain announced. There will be but one throne in the throne room at this year's formal courts. The Prince of Wales will lead his mother to the dais and then take his place in the family circle, below the dais and to one side.

By this announcement the Lord Chamberlain did his best to spike the ever recurring rumor that the king will never resume his duties as ruler again, and that the Prince of Wrales is shortly to be proclaimed Regent_ In this case, of course, the Prince would preside at court, taking his place on the dais with the Queen. Despite the Lord Chamberlain, U. S. newsorgans reprinted the Regency story, insisted on it, and promised that the Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin would proclaim the Regency of the Prince of Wales within a month.

P: Corporal Puddifoot of the St. John's Ambulance Brigade displayed a gleaming pair of gold cuff links last week, a present from Queen Mary. For Corporal Puddifoot was one of the four stretcher-bearers who bore the King-Emperor from Buckingham Palace to the motor ambulance which carried him to Bognor. Last week the King's Equerry, Col. Arthur Erskine, in behalf of the Queen, handed each of the four a pair of massive gold links, each large enough to bear the inscription: "A Memento of Her Majesty's Appreciation of Your Services."