GREAT BRITAIN: Come along, Ganpa!

“They say the King looks younger!”— breathlessly loyal Britons passed the word. Thousands stood huddled along London curbstones to see and judge for themselves. Beloved George V was coming home at last to Buckingham Palace after his long convalescence at the rustic royal estate of Sandringham. At spick-and-span King’s Cross Station a long red carpet had been spread. Baron Byng of Vimy stood stiff and medal-spangled at one end. As Chief of London’s Police he was alert and anxious. This time) the route which Royalty would take to the Palace had not been kept secret, as is usual. If there were anyone in England with a grudge against the King, now was his chance.

Almost before Their Majesties’ salon pullman stopped before Lord Byng, the door flew open. Out popped a deep-dimpled little girl in blue, her chubby legs cased in white gaiters. She gave a joyous hop-skip-and-jump along the platform and almost plumped into Byng of Vimy. He, deftly sidestepping, punctiliously bowed to irrepressible “Baby Betty,” Her Royal Highness Princess Elizabeth, only granddaughter and unspoiled darling of George V. When His Majesty followed the babe it was seen at once that he did look younger. His cheeks were a breeze-tanned brown. Faultlessly groomed, firm of step and with a new vitality of movement, the King-Emperor escorted Queen Mary to the waiting royal Daimler. Already Baby Betty had plumped into the back seat. “Come along, Ganpa!” piped she.

With babe on knee George V rode through a mile of fluttering women’s handkerchiefs and hearty Englishmen’s cheers. At the Palace he kissed Betty goodbye, shut her firmly into the limousine, ordered the chauffeur to drive to the house of her parents, the Duke and Duchess of York (No. 145 Piccadilly). As Baby Betty waved out the back window, George V firmly marched up the stair to the royal apartments.

Next day His Majesty held the third Privy Council at which he has presided since his convalescence began (TIME, Feb. 4). Later he gave private audience to Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald, heard all about the Naval Disarmament plans of “a dear old Quaker” (see p. 26). Next morning, still unwearied, the King-Emperor received a string of Ministers, including Ministress o;f Labor Miss Margaret (“Saint Maggie”) Bondfield, onetime starveling clerk in a draper’s shop. Cheerful and quietly dressed, she entered Buckingham Palace as the first of her sex ever summoned there officially as a Minister of the Crown.

In the afternoon George V was whisked to visit his sister Louise, the Princess Royal, now convalescent from her recent illness, at her snug home in Portman Square. That night he celebrated, went to the theatre for the first time since he fell sick a year ago. Intellectuals who tried to guess what play His Majesty would choose ruled out one, the U. S. musical comedy Rose Marie which ran in London with the persistency of an Abie’s Irish Rose and has recently been revived. In past years King George and Queen Mary have seen Rose Marie a total of three times. Last week they fooled the guessers and went again, beamed from the “Royal Box” of the soi-disant “Theatre Royal in Drury Lane,” while a frantic audience waved programs and sang “God Save the King.”

Cheers were not louder even in Moscow last week, where convalescent Soviet Dictator Josef Stalin made an almost exactly similar theatre appearance. Comrade Stalin clapped an actress who sang a Georgian love song. King-Emperor George V clapped vigorously the lilting, sentimental songs of plump, brunette Edith Day, born 33 years ago in Minneapolis.

“We do not know what special attraction Rose Marie has for the King,” said a member of the manager’s staff at Drury Lane, “unless it is that His Majesty likes the tunefulness of the play and the fact that there is nothing in the text to cause embarrassment or uncomfortableness.”

As if to show that he really likes the theatre and is well enough to take it straight without music, the King-Emperor went two nights later to chuckle at Marie Tempest (“the British Mrs. Fiske”) in St. John Ervine’s comedy The First Mrs. Fraser. Pieces passed up by Their Majesties included Shaw’s new Apple Cart, Barrie’s old Dear Brutus, and a magnificent Gilbert & Sullivan revival sequence at the Savoy Theatre, now sumptuously rebuilt and gone modernist.