The Crown

The Cown P:George V by the Grace of God King, Emperor of India and Defender of the Faith looks almost exactly like the late Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias, and has never forgiven Bolsheviks for butchering his first cousin. Last week, as Lord Privy Seal Anthony Eden arrived in Moscow to confer with Joseph Stalin (see p. 19), King George again found means to show his strong feelings. Unimpressed by the fact that Bolshevik leaders were drinking his health at Moscow in champagne, an all-time high for hypocrisy, George V called to Buckingham Palace and privately knighted M. Peter Bark, the last Finance Minister of Nicholas II.

Apart from his public capacity, Banker Bark had been for years the adviser in private financial matters of King George's aunt, the late beauteous Empress of All the Russias Marie Feodorovna. sister of Britain's Queen Alexandra. Escaping to England after the Revolution, the Tsarist banker has prospered, today is Managing Director of the Anglo-International Bank. Said freshly-knighted Sir Peter Bark significantly: "My knighthood was conferred as a personal order from the King."

P:Rested by his recent seaside holiday, mellow old George V last week felt fit as a Stradivarius for his exhausting Silver Jubilee which commences May 6. Shushing the royal physicians, who favored further rest, the King-Emperor insisted on doing two major chores in one day.

In the afternoon bedight as a Field Marshal, he motored to Victoria Station. There amid jostling notables waited "The Man From Tasmania." famed Premier Joseph Lyons of Australia who has restored the finances of that spendthrift dominion.

Last year Mr. Lyons right cordially received Their Majesties' third son, the Duke of Gloucester, in Australia. Last week he watched a special train draw in from Portsmouth, carrying Gloucester up from the Australian battle cruiser Australia which had just delivered him safely home to England. After an absence of seven months, Gloucester's respectful first move was to try to kiss the Queen-Empress' hand but his mother advanced, welcomed him with a majestic hug & kiss. That night King George conferred upon Gloucester the grand cross of the honorary order of St. Michael and St. George.

In the evening Their Majesties, though it had been announced that Edward of Wales would perform the chore to spare his parents, held the first two courts of the year at Buckingham Palace. Irma, spouse of Jesse Isidor Straus, U. S. Ambassador to France, was presented in what her dressmaker called "a gown of ice-blue silver lame of streamline cut." At a hint from the Queen most debutantes and dowagers omitted lipstick, mascara, rouge. Since Buckingham Palace was distinctly chilly, some of them grumbled at the Lord Chamberlain's requirement that they appear in decollete. Not to be intimidated, several elderly English ladies harassed the Lord Chamberlain into permitting them to be presented in high-necked creations, cozy and warm.

P:Irishmen would have it that last week "King George received a direct, personal snub from President de Valera." Actually the tall, teacherish, wild-haired executive of the Irish Free State (which Irishmen say "is not Irish, is not Free and is not a State") conveyed to Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald a polite, though stiff intimation that "in existing circumstances" he "will not be able" to attend the Royal Jubilee with other dominion heads. In attendance, however, will be the Irish Free State's London-resident High Commissioner.

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