Entente Strengthened

Two Frenchmen, confirmed bachelors of 63 and 65, spent three days, last week, as the house guests of a respected and venerated British man, 62, and wife, 60. Because these four persons are great personages, their conjunction occurred amid the richest and most solemn pomp which Imperial Britain has evoked since the World War. Host and hostess: Their Britannic Majesties. Guests: President Gaston Doumergue of the French Republic and Foreign Minister Aristide Briand.

This year the "London Season" (premiere social period lasting through July) will date from M. le President's State Visit. Not since before the, War has the "Season" opened in a manner more august.

Lucky Men. The pageant began when Their Majesties arrived at Victoria Station, London, to await M. le President. Round about stood, like seeming giants, the Foot Guards in their enormous, tall, bearskin hats. On prancing coal black horses sat stiffly the Horse Guards, clad in white buckskin breeches and silver-plated body armor. Across the Royal Waiting Room and down the platform was spread a great crimson carpet.

Did His Majesty, standing there as the train puffed in, reflect perhaps how great has been the role of Chance in his life and in that of the French President? The gilded Royal Coach, and all the trappings of this King, even to the great lady who is his Queen, were destined originally for a man now dead, his elder brother, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence.

The Duke of Clarence was engaged to Princess Victoria Mary of Teck at the time of his death (1892), but in the succeeding year the Princess was married to Prince George, now King and Emperor. Chance interrupted the succession and brought to a young sailor prince his consort and his throne. How has Chance dealt with Gaston Doumergue?

The President's father was a vinedresser -- a peasant in wooden sabots and an earth-stained blouse. As a lad, little Gaston wriggled his bare toes often in grape mash as he trod out the juices on which fermentation works. The circumstances of his rise (TIME, Aug. 2) need not be rehearsed again. Nothing is more certain than that when the King-Emperor and the President greeted each other last week, two able but almost incredibly lucky men shook hands.

Imperious Etiquette. One would suppose that General Baron Byng of Vimy, World War hero and recent Governor General of Canada, would be welcome at any banquet. Yet he was excluded last week from the State Dinner tendered to President Doumergue by Their Majesties.

He was excluded as "improperly dressed," because he was wearing only ordinary evening clothes, adorned simply with the orders of the Legion of Honor and the Bath. That was not enough. The invitations, by Royal command, called for the full dress uniform to which Lord Byng is entitled by his rank --a uniform resplendent with scarlet and gold. . . . Court etiquette makes no exceptions. The baron cooled his heels without, while Lady Byng, "properly dressed," dined.

Gold-Laden Board. At 8 o'clock early arrivals among the banquet guests began to pass up the Grand Staircase of Buckingham Palace, along the ascent of which stood like statues troopers of the Household Cavalry. Entering the Banquet Chamber through the State Apartments, the guests beheld tables laid for some 150, with the famed Gold Plate of George II (1683-1760). Raised upon a long dais stood the Royal board.

His Majesty George V presided at the centre, clad in the gold braid-encrusted uniform of an Admiral of the Fleet. The seating:

George V toasted M. le President: " . . .Your visit to London is a manifest sign of the entente cordiale so happily established between our two countries. . . ."

M. le President toasted back: " . . .Confident collaboration . . . unite all our efforts . . . save the World from a return to fearful conflagration. . . ."

Entente Cordiale. Pomp is, after all, only necessary window dressing. It included last week the laying of many a wreath by President Doumergue on many a War memorial. It included drives about the city amid cheering throngs; and a visit to Oxford where honorary D. C. L.'s (Doctor of Civil Law) were conferred on MM. Doumergue and Briand. Was the visit all "shop window?"

It was not. Several times during the three days Foreign Minister Briand dashed away from public functions for a series of long, quiet, earnest talks with British Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain.

To them the "window dressing" was a godsend. It kept correspondents chasing gold braid, kept them from trying to pry into the statesmen's secret talks. Certainly Statesmen Briand and Chamberlain discussed the British raid on the Russian Trade Delegation (see above), and it was understood that they tentatively agreed upon a joint policy of boycotting Russia diplomatically and commercially. Unquestionably they spoke of the rival intrigue between France and Italy in the Balkans, each nation being now engaged in building up a group of Balkan Allies. Here Sir Austen must have stepped cautiously, for he has close relations with Premier Mussolini. Finally the two statesmen, both leading co-authors of the Locarno Pacts, must have learned with unfeigned pleasure that Germany has kept her word in destroying fortifications along the Polish frontier (see GERMANY).

At these little conferences, and not by banquet toasts, the Franco-British entente cordiale, dating from 1903 and fostered by the late King Edward, was still more closely cemented last week.

Their Majesties. As the presidential son of a vinedresser returned to France, last week, what impression did he carry home of the "British" royalty, who are, after all, almost exactly as "German" as Wilhelm II, cousin of George V:

President Doumergue had been the guest of a King and Queen rarely able, widely beloved, and altogether adequate to uphold with dignity the important pretense that the "British Empire" is not (as it is) a loosely federated group of republics.

Queen Mary was what she is almost from girlhood: a woman of queenly dignity which never unbends yet never repels, and possessed of an invaluable countenance which seldom smiles yet is always graciously reassuring. She does not dominate the King, as is vulgarly supposed; for his genuinely strong will and active judgment are at variance with the softened expression lent to his face by a silky beard.

His Majesty can and did, in his youthful seafaring days, utter commands with appropriate oaths. He is still, at 62, one of the very best bird shots in England. And, though he hunts and rides often, he is always prudent enough to choose a horse of the right weight. Thus George V is not flung off constantly, as is that really excellent horseman Edward of Wales, who, however, insists upon always riding too heavy and powerful a horse.

Her Majesty's mother, Princess Mary Adelaide, Duchess of Teck, was a large, blocky woman of tremendous, athletic vitality, and of a personal magnetism so great that she was sometimes called "the most popular princess of her time." The present Queen and Empress forged her own naturally retiring and bashful disposition in the heat of contact with her dynamic mother. They were more than usually devoted, and sometimes showed their affection in fierce but not violent quarrels. The death of her fiance, the late Duke of Clarence, and death of her mother perhaps gave to Queen Mary that final trial of spirit which renders her understanding and sympathy with human suffering so entirely queenly.

It is recorded that a specialist at one of the great Army hospitals once told Queen Mary of a man whose face was entirely disfigured, and who in consequence had brooded until he was almost mad. If Her Majesty would sit and talk with the wounded man, concealing her repugnance, perhaps he would believe his disfigurement bearable, would cease to brood into madness.

Her Majesty sat for almost an hour, close to the man whose face was only mangled meat, talking serenely on indifferent subjects, unsmiling yet calm, reassuring, queenly. She said afterwards: "It was indescribable. I thought I could not do it; but then, of course, there is nothing one can't do."

Of the King's youth perhaps the most intriguing "secret" is that during his long training as a Navy officer he became enamored of the daughter of a certain Admiral. The affair came to nothing; and it is notable that His Majesty has not given an ever willing public the opportunity to forgive a few royal indiscretions beneath the rose. In other respects the King and Emperor is a Navy man to his fingertips. Admiral Earl Beatty and a few other titled salts are among his closest friends.

In 1897 the present King and Queen, then Prince and Princess of Wales, donned masquerade costume and attended a great ball at Devonshire House. George V, with his traditional distaste for dancing, stood watching some rather portly couples pirouette. "Humph!" he exclaimed to a friend, "they look like people pushing wheelbarrows." A distaste for even the slight subterfuge of fancy dress is characteristic of both Their Majesties. And, today, as King and Queen they masquerade no more. Paradoxically they are fated to wear at every State function robes and diadems more breath-taking than any fancy dress.

Finally, Their Majesties displayed throughout the War a quiet, unobtrusive, and therefore convincing loyalty to Britain which wiped away what was then the taint of their German blood. Even more remarkable has been their success in winning over to loyalty to the throne nearly all the outstanding leaders of British Labor. The worth of King George and Queen Mary as Constitutional sovereigns has been tested harshly and found sterling.