Westward with the Prince of Wales

by W. Douglas Newton

There was no qualification or reservation in New York's welcome to the Prince of Wales.

In the last year or so I have seen some great crowds, and by that I mean not merely vast aggregations of people, but vast gatherings of people whose ardour carried away the emotions with a tremendous psychic force. During that year I had seen the London crowd that welcomed back the British military leader; the London and Manchester crowds, and vivid and stirring crowds they were, that dogged the footsteps of President Wilson; I had seen the marvellous and poignant crowd at the London Victory March, and I had had a course of crowds, vigorous, affectionate and lively, in Montreal, Toronto and throughout Canada.

I had been toughened to crowds, yet the New York crowd that welcomed the Prince was a fresh experience. It was a crowd that, in spite of writing continuously about crowds for four months, gave me a direct impulse to write yet again about a crowd, that gave me the feeling that here was something fresh, sparkling, human, warm, ardent and provocative. It was a crowd with a flutter of laughter in it, a crowd that had a personality, an insouciance, an independence in its friendliness. It was a crowd that I shall always put beside other mental pictures of big crowds, in that gallery of clear vignettes of things impressive that make the memory.

There was a big crowd about the Battery long before the Prince was due to arrive across the river from the Jersey City side. It was a good-humoured crowd that helped the capable New York policemen to keep itself well in hand. It was not only thick about the open grass space of the Battery, but it was clustering on the skeleton structure of the Elevated Railway, and mounting to the sky, floor by floor, on the skyscrapers.

High up on the twenty-second floor of neighbouring buildings we could see a crowd of dolls and windows, and the dolls were waving shreds of cotton. The dolls were women and the cotton shred was "Old Glory." High up on the tremendous cornice of one building a tiny man stood with all the calm gravity of a statue. He was unconcerned by the height, he was only concerned in obtaining an eagle's eye view.

About the landing-stage itself, the landing-stage where the new Americans and the notabilities land, there was a wide space, kept clear by the police. Admirable police these, who can handle crowds with any police, who held us up with a wall of adamant until we showed our letters from the New York Reception Committee (our only, and certainly not the official, passes), and then not only let us through without fuss but helped us in every possible way to go everywhere and see everything.

In this wide space were gathered the cars for the procession, and the notabilities who were to meet the Prince, and the camera men who were to snap him. Into it presently marched United States Marines and Seamen. A hefty lot of men, who moved casually, and with a slight sense of slouch as though they wished to convey "We're whales for fighting, but no damned militarists."

Since the Prince was not entering New York by steamer—the most thrilling way—but by means of a railway journey from Sulphur Springs, New York had taken steps to correct this mode of entry. He was not to miss the first impact of the city. He would make a water entry, if only an abbreviated one, and so experience one of the Seven (if there are not more, or less) Sensations of the World, a sight of the profile of Manhattan Island.

The profile of Manhattan (blessed name that O. Henry has rolled so often on the palate) is lyric. It is a sierra of skyscrapers. It is a flight of perfect rockets, the fire of which has frozen into solidity in mid-soaring. It is a range of tall, narrow, poignant buildings that makes the mind think of giants, or fairies, or, anyhow, of creatures not quite of this world. It is one of the few things the imagination cannot visualize adequately, and so gets from it a satisfaction and not a disappointment.

This sight the Prince saw as he crossed in a launch from the New Jersey side, and "the beauty and dignity of the towering skyline," his own words, so impressed him that he was forced to speak of it time and time again during his visit to the city. And on top of that impression came the second and even greater one, for, and again I use his own words, "men and women appeal to me even more than sights." This second impression was "the most warm and friendly welcome that followed me all through the drive in the city."