From a Photograph] [by the London Stereoscopic Co.
THE HONG KONG POLICE AND OTHER TROOPS FROM THE CROWN COLONIES PASSING DOWN KING WILLIAM STREET.
From a Photograph] [By Valentine & sons, Dundee.
THE COLONIAL PROCESSION: THE CARRIAGES OF THE PREMIERS CROSSING LONDON BRIDGE.
Soon after nine o’clock the first part of the Procession left Buckingham Palace. It consisted of the Colonial contingent, headed by Field-Marshal Lord Roberts, V.C., supporting a Field-Marshal’s bâton on his right thigh, and mounted on a grey pony. All along the route the gallant soldier was greeted with mighty cheers, and it was universally thought that the choice of so popular a General to command the Colonial troops while they were in this country was a singularly felicitous one. |The Colonial Procession.| Immediately behind the Field-Marshal rode the Canadian Hussars, 2nd Canadian Dragoons, and the Mounted Police—a magnificent group of men, who excited universal admiration—preceding the carriage of the Premier of Canada, the Right Hon. Sir Wilfrid Laurier. This gentleman was received with thunders of applause by the spectators, as were the other Colonial Premiers; and if anything were needed to convince our illustrious visitors that the heart of the old country is warm for her children, their welcome on this day of days amply fulfilled the need. Then came the New South Wales Mounted Rifles, the New South Wales Lancers, and the Victorian Mounted Rifles—superb horsemen these, and singularly effective-looking in their slouch hats fastened up at the side and khaki uniforms—and after them the carriage in which rode the Premiers of New South Wales and Victoria. But it is impossible to give an account of each group. The actual spectators of the beautiful Colonial procession could but feast their eyes on each body of splendid warriors as it passed, and cherish a vain wish that the pageant might be repeated again and again until every individual horseman and foot-soldier had received a due meed of admiration. Only too quickly came into view and passed away New Zealand mounted troops—among them a few giant Maoris——Queensland Mounted Rifles, riflemen from the Cape and South Australian Lancers, Natal Carabiniers and Umvoti, Natal and Border Mounted Rifles, and then troops from the Crown Colonies; Trinidad Mounted Rifles, and Zaptiehs from Cyprus; “upstanding Sikhs, tiny little Malays and Dyaks; Chinese with a white basin turned upside down on their heads; grinning Hausas, so dead black that they shone like silver in the sun—white men, yellow men, brown men, black men, every colour, every continent, every race, every speech—and all in arms for the British Empire and the British Queen.” After the Cypriotes came a handful of the Rhodesian Horse, headed by the Hon. Maurice Gifford, carrying one pathetic empty sleeve across his breast—a group that evoked almost frantic cheering. “Up they came, more and more,” says Mr. G. W. Steevens, in the Daily Mail of June 23, “new types, new realms at every couple of yards, an anthropological museum—a living gazetteer of the British Empire. With them came their English officers, whom they obey and follow like children. And you began to understand, as never before, what the Empire amounts to. Not only that we possess all these remote outlandish places, and can bring men from every end of the earth to join us in honouring our Queen, but also that all these people are working, not simply under us, but with us that we send out a boy here and a boy there, and the boy takes hold of the savages of the part he comes to, and teaches them to march and shoot as he tells them, to obey him and believe in him, and die for him and the Queen. A plain, stupid, uninspired people, they call us, and yet we are doing this with every kind of savage man there is. And each one of us—you and I, and that man in his shirt-sleeves at the corner—is a working part of this world-shaping force. How small you must feel in face of the stupendous whole, and yet how great to be a unit in it!”
From a Photograph] [by F. Downer, Watford.
THE COLONIAL PROCESSION: THE RHODESIAN HORSE IN THE MALL, HEADED BY THE HON. MAURICE GIFFORD.