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Few Britons ever sang the second stanza of God Save the King. Anyone who did sounded as if he were instructing the Almighty in the tone of an irate football coach bawling out a quarterback between halves. It goes: O Lord our God, arise, Scatter his enemies And make them fall; Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks; On Thee our hopes we fix; God save us all.

Last week, on King George VI's orders, they got a much mellower substitute stanza, although the first and fourth lines still had a shade of condescension. Appropriately enough, the new verse's first official appearance was at a national service of intercession for the United Nations in St. Paul's Cathedral, with the King, Queen and Clement Attlee heading the congregation : Nor on this land alone --But be God's mercies known From shore to shore. Lord, make the nations see That men should brothers be, And form one family The wide world o'er.

As hymnology this was a considerable improvement, but the services at St. Paul's were more memorable for a really impressive prose passage from the Archbishop of Canterbury's sermon:

"Concord is not natural to men or nations.

"To this day men are the most profoundly divided by their cultures and their creeds. To those divisions are now added the rivalry of economic interests.

"All these divisions are exacerbated, first by the fact that all men are now interdependent and unable to get away from one another; second, by consequent fears of one another; and third, by the deadliness of the powers available not only for destruction but for coercing the mind and wills of men."

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