With choking voice and tears George VI ascends the throne

Friday, 07 May 2010 05:00

With choking voice and tears George VI ascends the throne
Friday, 07 May 1910

One hundred years ago, clippings from the newspapers of May 7, 1910.

Toronto Star.“With voice choking with emotion and his cheeks wet with tears,” George Frederick Ernest Albert took the oath of office at London’s St. James Palace by which he became King George V of Britain and its colonies, succeeding his father, Edward VII, who died the day before, the Star reports from London.

George reigned for 26 of the 20th century’s most tumultuous years, but lead what some biographers have called a dull life. Four years after his ascension brought the First World War with its 16 million military and civilian deaths and 21 million wounded. George abandoned all German titles and changed the name of the royal house from Saxe-Coburg-Gatha to Windsor. The next decade brought the roaring twenties, with prohibition, bathtub gin, flapper girls and suffragettes who won their struggles for the woman’s vote. When King George died in 1936, millions were destitute by history’s severest and most universal economic depression and the British Empire was in its twilight years.

On active duty with the Royal Navy from age 12 to 26, George saw the world, but as monarch, he travelled only infrequently to visit the outpost of his empire. He preferred to stay home and work on his stamp collection.

Lost U.S. world vision
Halifax Herald. Former U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt advocates an early version of the United Nations, armed with military power, and a world court modelled on the U.S. Supreme Court, in a Nobel Peace Prize acceptable speech.

“It would be a master stroke if those great power, honestly bent on peace, would form a League of Peace, not only to keep peace among themselves, but to prevent, by force if necessary, its being broken by others… The ruler or statesman who should bring about such a combination would have earned his place in history for all time and his title to the gratitude of all mankind.”

A century later, this American vision has largely faltered, not least because of a lack of American support.

There was nothing like Roosevelt’s League of Peace when the First World War arrived. The League of Nations that followed that war collapsed largely because the United States declined to join. The United Nation’s International Court of Justice, aka the World Court, proposed at a Paris Peace Conference in 1919, was established in 1945, but its authority is hampered. Its mandate is to settle international disputes, but only when they are referred to it by the countries involved; thus, for example, it has no mandate to settle the violent disputes between Israel and its neighbours. The United States in 1986 chose to recognize the jurisdiction of the World Court only on a selective basis. The court’s power to enforce its rulings is subject to veto by the five members of the UN Security Council; China, France, Russia, Britain and the United States.

A second world court, the International Court of Justice, was established in 2002 to prosecute individuals for genocide and crimes against humanity. It has some authority among its 111 member countries but again is hampered by a number of important countries that have declined to participate, including China, India, Russia and the United States.

No Chinese wanted
Belleville Intelligencer. Grand Trunk Railway president Charles Hays says no Chinese will be employed in building the western section of its Pacific line because people in Western Canada don‘t want “Yellow labour and we do not propose to force it upon them. Without it, of course, it will take longer to complete the line, but I believe the western people will be prepared to wait.” The Grand Trunk and the Canadian Northern both built railroads to the Pacific, both went broke and were taken over by the government to become the present Canadian National Railway.

Cowtown gambling
Lethbridge Herald. “Unless it goes on secretly, gambling as it has been carried on here,” in backrooms of the Lethbridge’s pool halls “will be no more,” says the Herald. Faced with a police crackdown, the pool hall owners say they use the backrooms for storage or other uses. Police Justice Inspector West handed out fines of up to $100 (equivalent to about $2,500 in 2010 dollars) to seven men arrested during a raid on one of the backrooms. Edward Anderson, a cowpuncher who was waiting for the spring roundup to start, said he was “ready to quit any time the city said it did not want gambling.” Two of those arrested were “charged with looking on,” and “were given 24 hours to go to work or get out of the city.”