Crown's Week

P: At Windsor Castle Edward VIII last week inspected the Coldstream Guards. Visiting the barracks he found a Sergeant Jenkins, lately transferred from the Welsh Guards. Sergeant Jenkins was the proud possessor of a photograph of the finish of a regimental foot race which a drummer-boy named Davis was winning, with Edward of Wales running second and Sergeant Jenkins a close third.

"Sometime," said King Edward, "you and I must see who is really the better man."

"I should love to," said Sergeant Jenkins, "but I'm three years older now."

"So am I," said the King, "and I've got a nasty bone in my leg, too. I say, if you send that photograph to St. James's Palace, I shall be very glad to autograph it."

P: Small, self-assured Princess Elizabeth, second in line to the British throne, celebrated her tenth birthday in Windsor Great Park last week. As a special treat, she was allowed to have breakfast downstairs with her father & mother, the Duke and Duchess of York, and her grandmother, Queen Mary. Birthday presents from family & friends were hidden in closets and behind chairs. A large electric automobile from Mamma and Papa and a bicycle from Grandmamma were hard to conceal, but it took 20 minutes of scrabbling to uncover a gold-headed riding crop from His Majesty, "Uncle David." Later, Princess Elizabeth used the crop to thump the fat sides of her favorite white pony, Peggy. In the afternoon there was a children's party in the tiny playhouse, gift of the people of Wales in 1932. Princess Elizabeth made the tea and buttered the toast herself.

P: Down with the measles last week was the Princess Royal, better known as Princess Mary, and her younger son, the Hon. Gerald David Lascelles. 11

P: One Robert Bell, Wartime groom to Edward of Wales and until last week a stableboy in Ireland, received a black-bordered envelope from Buckingham Palace, joyfully chucked up his job to work for King Edward.

P: On duty at Buckingham Palace last week-end were two gauntleted motorcyclists from the Army Service Corps ready to rush dispatches to King Edward's week-end hideaway, Fort Belvedere, the instant they arrive instead of waiting for the evening messenger, whose duty it has always been to carry the day's dispatches to the King out of town. In deference to Minister of Transport Leslie Hore-Belisha's safety campaign (TIME, Sept. 10, 1934), the motorcycle messengers were expressly ordered to obey all traffic laws. Edward's new motorcyclists will be listed as King's Home Service Messengers and are not to be confused with the King's Messengers attached to the Foreign Office. As his badge of office a King's Messenger carries a small silver medal engraved with. a running greyhound, which is supposedly potent enough to commandeer a British warship in an emergency. At the present time there are only three King's Messengers: Major Custance, Lieut. Colonel Porter, and Acting Messenger Wilton. Week after week, they take a number of red morocco boxes filled with diplomatic documents to Paris, where they board the Orient Express to Istanbul and Cairo. On the out trip they drop off boxes at Lausanne (for Geneva), Milan (for Rome), Budapest, Bucharest, Belgrade, Athens, pick up others at the same points on their way home. No King's Messenger is necessary for Washington since Britain's diplomatic documents are brought to Manhattan by the pursers of British liners, there handed to the British consulate.

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