Welcome & Sympathy

Two children in an Auckland park last week were loudly disputing the identity of the great lady just passing in an automobile. One thought it might be Britain's Queen; the other firmly insisted that it was only Princess Margaret. With a smile, Elizabeth II, who had just arrived in New Zealand, leaned out of her slowly moving car, smiled and said: "It's me."

Many other New Zealanders were pleased and surprised last week at the easy informality of the visitor who is not only Britain's Queen but their own. From the first moment of their welcome in Auckland harbor, when New Zealand yachtsmen by the hundreds braved a spanking breeze in sleek sloops and smart knockabouts to guide their liner Gothic to its berth, Elizabeth and her husband Philip radiated warmth and friendliness. They cut security measures to a minimum so that their subjects could see them close at hand. They went out of their way to arrange a call on one proud Maori chieftain who had been bypassed in the official schedule. They heard that the daughter of a provincial mayor was miffed at being left out of a reception, and saw to it that she was presented along with her father. By Christmas Eve, it seemed a foregone conclusion that the royal visit would provide New Zealand with the best Christmas ever.

The Bridge Collapses. Then, with brutal suddenness, tragedy struck. The Wellington-Auckland Express, crammed with holidaymakers bound to see the Queen, was winding through the rugged mountains of North Island. High up in the hills (probably as the result of a minor volcanic eruption), a mountain lake burst its banks and sent a torrent of water rushing down the Wangaehu River. As the nine-car train crossed over the Wangaehu Bridge, underpinnings weakened by the surge of water buckled and sagged. Five cars dropped into the river, dragging the engine with them. A sixth teetered drunkenly on the edge of the broken bridge and finally tumbled off. The holiday passengers were plunged into a swirl of water, silt and crazily bounding boulders. One of the carriages went somersaulting for 2 1/2 miles down the swollen river. The dead: 155. Christmas broadcasts throughout New Zealand were canceled to permit reading the lists of those who had been saved.

"Equal Partnership." Next morning, in somber mood, Queen Elizabeth II made her own traditional Christmas broadcast to the people of her Commonwealth. In the speech, which this year originated for the first time outside of Britain, she deplored the tendency to compare her reign with that of Elizabeth I. "Frankly, I do not myself feel at all like my great Tudor forebear, who was blessed with neither husband nor children, who ruled as a despot," she said, "but there is at least one significant resemblance between her age and mine. For her kingdom, small though it may have been . . . was yet great in spirit and well-endowed with men who were ready to encompass the earth . . . The Commonwealth bears no resemblance to the empires of the past. It is an entirely new conception ... To that new conception of an equal partnership of nations and races I shall give myself, heart and soul, every day of my life."

Her closing words were addressed to a New Zealand still stunned by its worst railway disaster. "I know," said the Queen, "there is no one in New Zealand, and indeed throughout the Commonwealth, who will not join with my husband and me in sending those who mourn a message of sympathy in their loss."

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