Parliament Opened

Momentously the Queen-Empress was indisposed. She was stricken last week, as was Mrs. Calvin Coolidge, with a stay-a-bed cold. Therefore two records were set: 1) Mrs. Coolidge, for the first time in her husband's administration, absented herself from a White House social function; and 2) Queen-Empress Mary, for the first time in her consort's reign, did not accompany His Majesty when he rode forth to open Parliament.

Royal Ride. Fairytalewise the State Coach of gold and glass drew up at the portal of Buckingham Palace. The eight superb, matched horses champed their eight matched bits. In another instant the King-Emperor would venture out, alone. Suddenly came an impudent diversion.

A young woman dodged through the cordon of police at the palace gate, sprinting for the portal. She was Miss Prudence ("Cherub") Trotter, smart enfant terrible, daughter of august Sir Victor Murray Coutts Trotter, Chief Justice of the High Court of Madras. She brandished an appeal. It besought His Majesty to urge upon Parliament in his Speech from the Throne immediate passage of the bill giving votes to all women over 21. Miss Trotter, just 20, evidently did not know that the boon she craved had already been drafted into the text of the Speech from the Throne. Soon she was seized by a towering bobby and lugged, kicking and squirming, outside the palace gate.

Soon George Frederick Ernest Albert, Rex et Imperator, clattered forth and rode between dense, cheering crowds to the Palace of Westminster, where sit the Lords & Commons.

Scene of State. In the, royal Robing Room, at Westminster, His Majesty donned once more "the ermine, the purple and the crown." Within the great Gothic hall of the House of Lords, Edward of Wales had already bowed to the empty Throne and "taken his place beside it. Through ancient stained glass, pale rays of daylight sifted. The Peers & Bishops sat robed and waiting. Justices were capped by wigs as big as beehives. Peeresses, crowding the gallery, wore again the flexible, diamond-studded bandeaux first introduced last year to replace old-fashioned tiaras.

Suddenly a whisper. Lights flash up, blazing upon countless gems. The Peers and Peeresses rustle as they rise and bow. Majestically the King enters. As he paces slowly forward, his crown is a mount of diadems, his train seems to stretch behind inimitably, borne by chubby pages with neat legs and little slim Court swords. His Majesty is England, rich, historic. When he speaks, his Dominions will listen, in their newness and youth. . . .

The Commons are summoned and hurry to stand at the bar of the Lords. Lastly, the Lord President of the King's Privy Council, Earl Balfour, kneels and presents a scroll containing "The King's Speech." Slowly it unrolls between the Sovereign's fingers and he begins to read: ". . . My relations with the Foreign Powers continue to be friendly. . . . My Government . . . my Secretary of State for India . . . my Army . . . my Navy . . . my Empire. . . ."