Royal Week

Driving through London last week His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, handsomest member of the Royal Family, came dutifully to a halt in front of a rope stretched across a street. From it hung a sign which in the past fortnight has become a familiar sight in many parts of the city: "DANGER--UNEXPLODED BOMB."

Precisely at this moment the unexploded Nazi bomb exploded and a shower of rubble dinned like hail on the roof of the Duke's car. When His Royal Highness jumped out, grinning and ruefully rubbing his ears, which still rang with the concussion, women gathered round the Duke. A frightened little girl came up and put her hand in his. He held it while he chatted with the people. "It's grand to see you here," said they. "How's your wife and youngsters?" "Fine, thanks!" said the Duke.

Similar were the experiences of the Duke's brother, King George. One day, after having the Prime Minister to lunch, he went during the afternoon raid, in the uniform of Admiral of the Fleet, to call on A. V. Alexander, who is King at the Admiralty. There he saw the latest Admiralty maps and charts, read its latest wireless reports on the activities of the Royal Navy.

Another day, in the Buckingham Palace underground shelter, he decorated widows and parents of 13 Navy, Army and Air Force officers who had died in action. While the afternoon sirens moaned he visited the Air Ministry in the uniform of Marshal of the R. A. F., watched the activities during the "alert," then visited Sir John Anderson at the Home Security Ministry.

Another day he took the Queen (who had been selecting 60 suites of Great-grandma Victoria's furniture from Windsor Castle to give to people bombed out of their homes) for a tour of bombed Chelsea, Fulham, Marylebone. In Chelsea ARPers told Their Majesties how they had worked seven and a half hours moving ten tons of wreckage to free a girl: they had had to use their bodies as struts to hold up the debris while tunneling. Said the King: "You have done grand work." Said George Pitman: "It's all in the day's work, Sir." Wally Capon, 54, raised a laugh by saying to the Queen: "Ever since the war started I have had my leg pulled about being an old man, but when a job like this comes along, Your Majesty, it is the old ones who can show the young ones what to do." Grimy workers coming off duty shook hands with their King. "I hope you don't mind my dirty hands," said one. His Majesty didn't. In Marylebone they stopped to see the wreck of Mme. Tussaud's waxworks.

Alert, interested, smiling, sympathetic with all sufferers, the Queen wearing her customary rope of pearls, the King pacing along with his hands behind his back, the royal couple got a warm reception.

Shouted one East End woman to the Queen: "God help the Nazis if they do anything to you and the King." Nowadays Their Majesties sleep and work deep down under Buckingham Palace in a shelter improvised out of what was once the sitting room of the royal housemaids (see cut, p. 31). From the Palace George VI broadcast this week on a globe-girdling hookup, announced that to reward "worthily and promptly the many and glorious . . . deeds of gallantry" now being done by British civilians amid the havoc of bomb raids His Majesty has created the "George Cross" and the "George Medal."

The George Cross, decreed George VI, "ranks next to the Victoria Cross" (which is the supreme British decoration awarded for valor in the Armed Forces), and the George Medal is "for wider distribution" --i.e., will probably be awarded wholesale among British fire fighters and airraid wardens of valor. Purpose: to strengthen the morale of the civil population, which was inevitably beginning to feel the strain (see p. 22).

"There will always be an England to stand before the world as the . . . citadel of hope and freedom," cried the King. He concluded: "And here I would like to tell the sorrowing parents how deeply we grieve for them over the loss of their children in the ship torpedoed without warning in mid-Atlantic (see p. 21). Surely the world could have no clearer proof of the wickedness against which we fight than this foul deed. . . . Let us then put our trust, as I do, in God and in the unconquerable spirit of the British people."

Whereabouts of Their Majesties' own children was officially secret but they were known to be "out of London" and on Sunday Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret Rose went to church with their parents in the Chapel Royal at Windsor Castle. Princess Elizabeth is said to be the only heir to the British Throne who ever studied U. S. history, last week was plugging through the late Lord Bryce's standard work The American Commonwealth. She has dropped the study of German, taken up Spanish. Both moppets and their Corgi terrier, Jane, have gone on wartime rations, both collect tinfoil, roll bandages, knit socks for Tommy Atkins. Elizabeth contributes from her savings to the Red Cross, Girl Guides, Air Ambulance Fund, buys National War Savings Bonds which are beyond the penny means of her little sister.

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