NEWS OF THE WEEK
THE engagement of Princess Elizabeth, on all grounds warmly to be welcomed, creates a situation for which there is no precedent since the time of Queen Anne, who became engaged and was married —also to a Prince of the House of Denmark—before she ascended the Throne. That Princess Elizabeth would in due course enter on that family life of which her parents and grandparents provided so admirable an example has always been naturally assumed, and now that her choice has been made there will be universal satisfaction that she has chosen so well. Though Lieut. Philip Mountbatten was, till his recent naturalisation as a British subject, known as Prince Philip of Greece, he had, of course, no Greek blood in him, being the grandson on the one side of the Danish Prince who accepted the Throne of Greece in 1863, and on the other of Prince Louis of Battenberg, to whom, as First Sea Lord, was due more than to any other man the splendid preparedness with which the Grand Fleet put to sea and sealed up the German Navy in 1914. Lieut. Mountbatten, who has made the British Navy his own career, has, in the eight years since he entered the Royal Naval College, shown a promise in his professional work comparable to that dis- played at a similar age by his distinguished uncle, the Viceroy of India. The young sailor's future will no doubt now be such as befits the husband of the heiress-presumptive to the Throne. He will share her many duties, lighten her burdens and " the care that yokes with empire," and by his support help her, in the days—still, we trust, far distant—when the Princess is Sovereign, to keep
her Throne unshaken still,
Broad-based upon her people's will And compass'd by the inviolate sea.
The Princess could hardly have made a choice that would raise questioning or doubt, but there is a special place in English hearts for a sailor and a sailor's bride.
