"Make a Big V!"

In successive British reigns the head of the Sovereign on coins and stamps faces alternately left & right. Thus Queen Victoria faces left, King Edward VII right, King George V left. King Edward VIII is to face right, but not until 1937, officials announced last week.

Mountains of George V stamps would have to be destroyed, experts said, if Edward VIII stamps of the same denominations were issued now. But work began at once changing the G. R. (Georgius Rex) on 9,000 mail vans to E. R. (Edvardus Rex). So desultory is this job that during the 26 years of George V's reign not all the postal vans were equipped to correspond with his name, and last week many still marked E. R. for the Seventh Edward were ordered left as they are for the Eighth. George V, when the Royal Mint was preparing to strike his coins, commanded: "Make a big V. I should not like to be mistaken for another George"--the reprehensible characteristics of the first "Four Georges" having been popularly dwelt upon by William Makepeace Thackeray.

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