NEWS OF THE WEEK
THE -first anniversary of the death of King George V fell on Wednesday. Memory ranges back to those days of splendour and sadness in Westminster Hall - and St. George's Chapel, and holds imprisoned in particular the picture of the four royal brothers who walked behind their father's coffin in the simple proces- sion from King's Cross to Westminster and again in the sombre and stately progress from Westminster to Windsor. The sympathies of a united nation were with King Edward as he took up the burden which he later declared too great to carry. They were with him still, shot through with sadness and regret, as he resolved to lay it down. Of the rightness of the course that has been taken, as compared with the course the King would have chosen, there can be no question. A strange interlude is over, and as the nation recalls the sovereign it lost a year ago it acclaims as his successor in spirit as well as flesh the sovereign on whom so unexpectedly the burden of kingship was laid six weeks ago. In that brief period, by a miracle of response throughout the Empire, King George VI has been set as firmly on the throne as his father was after a quarter of a century of rule. An anniversary that might have stirred unhappy and uneasy thoughts sends our minds back' only to a reign well ended and forward only to a reign as well begun—and with thankfulness for both.
