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There were four or five correspondents, of whom I was one, allowed to travel with the King. We had one of the royal motor cars, and wherever the King drove, we followed next to his equerries and officers. It was an astonishing experience, for we were part of the royal procession and in the full tide of that immense, clamorous enthusiasm of vast and endless crowds which awaited the King’s coming. Our eyes tired of the triumphal arches, floral canopies, flag-covered cities and hamlets, through which we passed, and of those turbulent waves of human faces pressing close to our carriage. Our ears wearied of the unceasing din of cheers, the noise of great multitudes, the skirl of the pipes, the distressing repetition of “God Save the King” played by innumerable brass bands, sung for hundreds of miles by the crowds, by masses of school children, by Scottish maidens of the universities, by old farmers, standing bareheaded as the King passed. We pitied any man who had to pass his life in such a way, smiling, saluting, keeping the agony of weariness out of his eyes by desperate efforts.


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