NEWS OF THE WEEK
T AST Wednesday, when King George stepped from the LI gangway of the 'Empress of Australia' on to Canadian soil, amid a thunderous welcome from his Canadian subjects, was a day historic in the annals of the British Common- wealth. The event itself is its own best comment. In an article on a later page our Washington correspondent performs the useful service of reproducing certain com- ments being made in the United States on the visit of the King and Queen to that country. No one will take amiss the attitude of slight suspicion revealed by writers in one or two of the popular papers ; it may be that if we had taken a different line over the payment of our debt to America that note would have been absent. But whatever the sus- picions they can have no possible justification in this case. If ever there was a royal visit without arriere pense it is this. The visit, moreover, was originally a visit simply to Canada, where the King and Queen are to spend three weeks. They might have gone as far as Niagara, looked across the falls to the United States, and refrained from setting foot on its soil. That would have been a marked, a surprising and a regrettable omission. As it is, President Roosevelt's invitation to Washington has been accepted in the spirit in which it was extended, with no thought on either side but of signalising, and if possible, inten- sifying, the unreserved cordiality which exists between two great peoples of common origins, speaking a common language, faced with common problems and imbued with common ideals of peace, order and security in a world in which their fortunes are intertwined. There is that in the royal visit—that and nothing else whatever.
