THE LION WILL ROAR

To most Americans the Coronation signifies a grand, un-British display of costly robes, real jewelry, and antique carriages. The masses know that well-to-do tourists are pouring into London by the carloard with baggage and accents revealing origins all the way from Taunton to Tokyo. They know that miles of wooden stands with rubberized bunting have been built, that one rehearsal with brass bands and everything took place before 200,000 at dawn.

What Americans little realize is that the Coronation marks an economic and political triumph for Great Britain and the Dominions. Jarred by the cataclysm of Edward Windsor, British manufacturers and tailors for some time saw the blackness of ruin, but now that Lloyd's rates have sunk, look to the Coronation as the biggest boom to business since the Jubilee. Returns will probably be higher than from the other celebration and high enough to rocket England into a decade of prosperity.

Though the man who will be crowned on May 12 may not have the "charm" of Edward Windsor, he promises to be as duty-bound and soundly virtuous as George V, one of whose homely maxims was "Teach me never to cry for the moon nor over split milk." Growing up under the careful eye of her grandmother, the heiress-presumptive promises to become a woman well equipped to be a second Queen Elizabeth. Such material for the throne, coupled with the fact that Premier Baldwin's government seems to have sharpened its democratic mace against Bolshevik and Fascist competition, ought more than ever to make the public conscious of the monarchy's power.

The Coronation is more than a drawing card for tourists and a spur to British industry; it symbolizes the tradition of unity and solidarity that has kept a broad-minded monarchy above the harmful reach of political revolutions and personal disabilities. It is an unconservative burst of pride for the loyalty of its subjects. Like the tawny cat who introduces and MGM picture, the Coronation will sound the note of exultation for the future weal of the British Empire.