Jean III to George V

The French Royalist news organ, L' Action Franc,aise gravely carried in its "Court Circular," last week, the news that "King Jean III of France"/- was sending his only son, the "Dauphin Henri of France" on a State Visit to British King-Emperor George V. Ignorant French republicans sniggered, supposing that a chill British reception, if any, awaited Dauphin Henri.

On the contrary, the State Visit was taken with utmost seriousness at Buckingham Palace. A banquet of thoroughgoing sumptuousness was got ready. His Majesty George V welcomed and even embraced the Dauphin of France, latest of the Bourbons. Her Majesty Queen-Empress Mary was ashimmer with diadems usually reserved for great occasions.

With the Dauphin arrived his sister, Princess Anne of France, who became the Duchessa delle Puglie of Italy, last year, when she married a cousin of Vittorio Emanuele, King of the Italians. To complete the roster of soi-disant royal guests came, last week, Her Majesty the Dowager ex-Queen Amelie of Portugal and her son ex-King Manoel, whose Realm is now a most turbulent and Dictator-ridden soi-disant Republic (TIME, Feb. 21, 1927).

For a peculiar reason the Buckingham banquet was especially merry. Reason: the British Royal House of Saxe-Coburg und Gotha, which changed its name to the House of Windsor during the War, became slightly estranged from the French House of Bourbon, when a most scurrilous cartoon of British Queen Victoria was openly guffawed at by "King Louis Philippe III of France," the cousin and predecessor of the present "King Jean III." Since the Royal Guffawer is now dead and the cartoon forgotten, it was easy, last week, for their Britannic Majesties to bestow gracious hospitality upon Dauphin Henri, a handsome youth of 20, who is now an undergraduate at the famed Belgian University of Louvain.

Royalists recalled that a Pretender to the Throne of France and all his sons are automatically and forever banished from the soil of the Republic. None the less the French Republican Government is not an enemy country. King Jean III during the War carried messages and was later allowed to do Red Cross work among "his people." With all to gain and nothing to lose, except his life, he was often in the front line trenches but escaped unscathed.

/-Fashionably known by his lesser title, the "Due de Guise."