The Bismarck Tribune

Queen Mother Adds to
Drama of Coronation
Venerated Widow of New King's
Father Is Little More
Than Spectator

By ELMER W. PETERSON

London,
May 12.-(AP)-Mists of
memory, swirling out of the past,
momentarily dimmed the eyes of 69-
year-old Queen Mother Mary today
for the coronation of her second
oldest son in the soft-lit splendor
of Westminster Abbey.

No one denied the proud and
stately old queen the right to yield
to emotion. For the coronation of
George VI was to Queen Mary, magnificently robed, with a half million dollar diadem agleam on her
head, a time of both pride and sorrow, both happiness and pain.

It was the past as well as the future
which paraded before her. In the
solemnity and majesty of the occasion, the pulsating music, the sonorous intonation of familiar words, the
ringing of bells and the echo of guns,
she watched and listened in the role
of onlooker-where once she had
participated and experienced.

Hears Memorable Words

"Receive the crown of glory, honor
and joy...

There was memory enough in that:
memory of the day 26 years ago
when she moved through the nave
of the abbey to the throne; of the
day when she rode through the
densely-packed streets of London as
a queen newly-crowned, in the golden state coach with King George
the Fifth by her side.

... A crown of pure gold upon
your head..."

Little More Than Spectator

Today she was little more than a
spectator, with destiny in retrospect
rather than a pathway to the future
-a grey-haired woman of almost 70.
watching history repeated but
changed, still true to the traditions of
an English queen.

Britain and the empire cheered her.
It may have been that her thought
dwelt on the world-shaking abdication of her oldest son, the brief-reigning Edward VIII, who gave up the
throne of empire for the love of dark-
eyed Wallis Warfield.