GREAT BRITAIN: Bachelor at 40

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King George likes "God Save the King" so well that royal bands now linger over it at an officially slowed tempo, but Edward of Wales is always trying to hurry them through his hymn with its lugubrious refrain:

A-mong our ancient mountains, And from our lovely vales, Oh! Let the pray-'r re-echo God bless the Prince of Wales!

The prayer re-echoed from St. George's chapel adjoining Windsor Castle one day last week as a man with darkening circles around his eyes motored over to have lunch with King George and Queen Mary. "Happy birthday, David!" cried members of the Royal Family but the discreet Castle staff had nothing to say when asked "Were there 40 candles on the Prince of Wales's birthday cake?"

When King George celebrated his 40th birthday he was a Prince of Wales with five children to his credit. Today H. R.

H. can tootle expertly on his saxophone the frivolous ditty which goes : England's virgin Queen was Bess, I'll be virgin King, I guess, And the greatest sport in England.

Not that H. R. H. at 40 is essentially frivolous. To quote a publicist devoted to the Royal Family: "More and more he puts his Peter Pan years behind him and becomes a serious citizen." But in one respect he refuses to please King George and Queen Mary. He will not live in Marlborough House. The Marlborough House issue arose first when the late Dowager Queen Alex andra moved there after King Edward's death, though London had long accepted Marlborough House as the normal residence of an adult Prince of Wales. Three years after the death of the Dowager Queen in 1925 the Queen swept in with carpenters, painters, decorators. At a cost running into tens of thousands of pounds enormous Marlborough House was made fit to receive David and his bride, but for six long years David has provokingly continued to occupy his bachelor suite in a wing of St. James's Palace. At a cost of additional thousands of pounds he has made over Fort Belvedere near Sunningdale Golf Course into a sumptuous bachelor's retreat.

It was from Fort Belvedere that H. R. H. drove over last week to Windsor Castle and to Fort Belvedere he drove back. Instead of golfing on his 40th birthday he donned overalls, took up a hoe and worked up a sweat among the vegetables of his bachelor garden.