GREAT BRITAIN: Civil Servant

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King John, a Plantaganet issued the Magna Charta. Henry VIII, a Tudor, acquired a kingly record for marriages. Elizabeth, another Tudor, made England mistress of the seas. Charles I, a Stuart, lost his head in a palace courtyard. George III, a Hanover, kept his pig-head and lost his country the richest half of North America. Victoria, a Saxe-Coburg, became Empress of India.

This week the 40th of this long line of monarchs also made history. He set out to visit: 1) a Dominion in which no British Sovereign had ever set foot; 2) a hemisphere never penetrated in person by any ruling King of Great Britain; 3) the nation which but for the stupidity of his great -great -great -Grandfather George, would today be the richest dominion of his Empire.

George VI—By the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and of the British

Dominions Beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India—head of an empire that covers one-fourth of the earth's surface and has 500,000,000 subjects, would probably have been the envy of that ambitious little monarch Henry VIII. The luckless, unpopular Stuarts would have grown green with jealousy had they been able to witness the crowds which last week cheered as King George and his consort, Queen Elizabeth, drove in state from London's stately Buckingham Palace to drab Waterloo Station, there to catch a special boat train for Portsmouth. Almost any of Britain's past crowned heads would have admired the scene at Portsmouth:

Thousands on the docks shouting "God bless you!" "A happy voyage!" "Give our love to America!" Seventy-one-year-old Queen Mary, the Queen Mother, wiped tears from her eyes. The King's daughters, Princess Elizabeth, 13-year-old heir-presumptive to the throne, and Princess Margaret Rose, 8, waved handkerchiefs. An obsequious bevy of Ministers, Neville Chamberlain, Lord Halifax, Sir Samuel Hoare, lined up to say goodby. The great white liner provided for the King's conveyance—Canadian Pacific's 25-year-old Empress of Australia, formerly the German Tirpitz—the spoils of a victorious war, flew the white ensign of the Royal Navy, the yellow-&-red Admiralty flag, the red, blue & gold royal standard bearing the arms of the United Kingdom.

Nor was this all that his predecessors might have envied George VI. They loved pomp and he has lords in waiting, grooms in waiting, gentlemen ushers, pages of honor, equerries in waiting, gentlemen-at-arms, yeomen of the guard, ladies of the bedchamber all about his palace; time has increased the number of the King's retainers. Although there is no longer a court fool, His Majesty still has a court sculptor, an organist, a keeper of the swans, a master of the King's music, a painter and limner, a botanist, a historiographer, some 59 ministers of the gospel for his soul, some 40 medical specialists for his body.