Part 22 (2/2)

There were several incidents in connection with the Coronation ceremonies which deeply impressed the onlookers. One was the spontaneous and obvious sincerity of the King's affectionate greeting to his son.

Another was the enfeebled condition of the aged Archbishop of Canterbury. With his ma.s.sive frame, brilliant intellect, and piercing eyes Dr. Temple had lived a life of intense mental activity and religious zeal, but in these declining days the ma.s.sive form had become bent and trembling, the memory and the eyes found difficulties in the solemn words of the service, and his shaking hands could hardly place the Crown upon the head of his King. But the latter's solicitude and anxious care to save the Primate any exertion, not absolutely essential, were marked and noticed by all that vast a.s.semblage. The Royal patient was transformed, by kindly sympathy, into a guardian of the Archbishop's weakness. When tendering his homage as first of all the subjects of the King, the aged Primate almost fainted and was unable to rise from his knees until His Majesty a.s.sisted him. Prior to the actual Coronation, Mr. Edwin A. Abbey, R.A., who had been commissioned by the King to paint a picture of the historic scene, was allowed to take note of the surroundings. Another incident of the event was the presence of the d.u.c.h.ess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz--placed by desire of Queen Alexandra in a seat at the exact spot which she had held during the Coronation of Queen Victoria.

On the day following the great event a final bulletin was issued by Sir F. Laking and Sir F. Treves, which stated that ”His Majesty bore the strain of the Coronation ceremony perfectly well, and experienced but little fatigue. The King has had a good night, and his condition is in every way satisfactory.” Being Sunday, special services were held in the St. James's Chapel Royal, at St. Paul's Cathedral, in Marlborough House Chapel, and at St. Margaret's, Westminster. On Monday, a Royal message to the nation was made public through Mr. Balfour, the Prime Minister.

Dated on Coronation Day, it described the Osborne House estate, on the Isle of Wight, as being the private property of the Sovereign, and expressed his wish to establish this once favourite residence of the late Queen as a National Convalescent Home for Officers of the Army and Navy--maintaining intact, however, the rooms which were in her late Majesty's personal occupation. ”Having to spend a considerable part of the year in the capital of this Kingdom and in its neighbourhood, at Windsor, and having also strong home ties in the County of Norfolk, which have existed now for nearly forty years, the King feels he will be unable to make adequate use of Osborne House as a Royal residence, and he accordingly has determined to offer the property in the Isle of Wight as a gift to the nation.” Following the Coronation came mult.i.tudes of editorial comments upon the event, and one of the most concise and expressive was that of the London _Times_: ”The significance of the Coronation ceremony on Sat.u.r.day lay in its profound sincerity, as a solemn compact between the Sovereign and his subjects, ratified by oath, and blessed by the highest dignitaries of the National Church. It was a covenant between a free people, accustomed for long centuries to be governed according to statutes in Parliament agreed on, and their hereditary King, and a supplication from both to G.o.d that the King may be endowed with all princely virtues in the exercise of his great office. Though the details of the ceremony do not mean to us all they meant to our forefathers, the ceremony itself is a no less strong and enduring bond between the King and subjects. The most striking feature of the Coronation was that it was the first to be attended by the statesmen of self-governing Colonies, and by the feudatory Princes of India.”

With the event also came an Ode from Mr. Alfred Austin, ent.i.tled ”The Crowning of Kings.h.i.+p.” On August 11th the King held a Council at Buckingham Palace, attended by the retiring and new members of the Cabinet; invested many distinguished personages with their Coronation honours; and gave an audience to Sir Joseph Dimsdale, Lord Mayor of London, who presented the City's Coronation gift of $575,000 toward the King Edward Hospital Fund, in which His Majesty had so long taken so deep an interest and to which, on this occasion, there was contributed 20,000 penny donations from the poorest quarters of London.

Various functions of a Coronation character or connection ensued. On August 12th some 2000 Colonial troops who were present at the event, in a representative capacity, from British dominions beyond the seas, were received by the King on the grounds of Buckingham Palace. Under the Royal canopy were the Queen and the children of the Prince of Wales, and in attendance were Earl Roberts, Lord Kitchener, Mr. Chamberlain and various Colonial Premiers, including Sir Wilfrid and Lady Laurier. After the march past, the King pinned a Victoria Cross on the breast of Sergeant Lawrence, and the Prince of Wales conferred Coronation medals upon the officers and men. His Majesty then addressed the troops as follows: ”It has afforded me great pleasure to see you here to-day and to have the opportunity of expressing my high appreciation of your patriotism and the way you distinguished yourselves in South Africa. The services you have rendered the Mother-Country will never be forgotten by me, and they will, I am sure, cement more firmly than ever the union of our distant Colonies with the other parts of my great Empire.”

On the following day the Indian troops sent from the great Eastern realm to honour the Coronation of its Emperor were reviewed at the same place.

His Majesty wore a jewelled sword which cost some $50,000, and had been presented to him on the previous day by the Maharajah of Jaipur. The scene was a most brilliant and picturesque one. The British notables present wore military or Levee dress; the great lawn of the Palace was a splendid spectacle in red, yellow, green and blue; the Eastern Princes were gorgeous in jewels and many-coloured raiment, and the little Princes Edward and Albert of Wales const.i.tuted themselves Aides of the King and brought several general officers up to have an audience. After the march past and the distribution of medals at the hands of the Prince of Wales, His Majesty addressed the troops in the following words: ”I wish to convey to all ranks the high satisfaction it has given me to see this splendid contingent from India. I almost feared, owing to my serious illness, that I would be prevented from having the advantage of seeing you, but I am glad to say that by G.o.d's mercy I am well again. I recognize among you many of the regiments I had the advantage of seeing at Delhi during my tour of India.” During the next few days various minor functions took place, and the Colonial leaders especially were feasted and entertained in every possible way.

On August 17th the final event occurred in connection with the Coronation. It was the mighty greeting of a great fleet to the Sovereign of a wide-flung realm. It was the inspection of a naval force which a generation before could have dominated the seas of the world and put all civilized nations under tribute. Gathered together from the Home Station, the Channel squadron and the Cruising squadron; without the detachment of a s.h.i.+p from foreign waters or Colonial stations, it included 20 battles.h.i.+ps, 24 cruisers and 47 torpedo crafts, with an outer fringe of foreign vessels contributed in complimentary fas.h.i.+on to honour the occasion. From Spithead to the Isle of Wight the horizon was black with great grim vessels of war decked out with flags, and as the King's yacht approached the first line of s.h.i.+ps, a hundred Royal salutes made a tremendous burst of sound such as probably the greatest battle-fields of history had never heard. As the King, in Admiral's uniform, stood upon the deck of his vessel and pa.s.sed slowly down the lines, a signal given at a certain moment evoked one of the most impressive incidents which even he had ever encountered--a simultaneous roar of cheers from the powerful throats of 50,000 enthusiastic sailors.

The sound rolled from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, and s.h.i.+p to s.h.i.+p, was echoed from 100,000 spectators on land and sea, and repeated again from the battles.h.i.+ps. The King was deeply moved by this crowning tribute of loyalty, and at once signaled his gratification to the fleet and an invitation to its flag officers to come aboard his yacht and receive a personal expression of his feelings. In the evening electric and coloured lights of every kind and in countless number combined with flas.h.i.+ng searchlights to illuminate the great fleet and to cast a glamour of fairy land over the splendid scene.

Meanwhile, in the morning, His Majesty had received on board his yacht the celebrated Boer Generals, Botha, De Wet and De la Rey. Afterwards, in company with Lord Kitchener and Earl Roberts they had returned to London greatly pleased with the cordiality of their reception and especially gratified at the kind manner of Queen Alexandra. Following the official Naval Review, the King on the next day visited the fleet in a stormy sea and watched it go through certain manoeuvres of a practical kind before being dispersed to its different local stations.

On his return to London he found the Shah of Persia a guest of the nation and awaiting formal reception at the hands of its Monarch. And thus King Edward took up again his unceasing round of duty and ceremonial and high responsibility. In the past year or two he had gone through every variety of emotional experience and official work and brilliant ceremony--his mother's death and the consequent mourning of a nation and empire; his own a.s.sumption of new and heavy duties; the special labours of an expectant period; the time of serious illness and the anxieties of complex responsibility to a world-wide public; the realization of his Coronation hopes; the change from an old to a new period stamped by the change in his national advisers and the presence of his Colonial Premiers. He now entered upon his further lifework, with chastened feelings in a personal sense but, it is safe to say, with high and brilliant hopes for the future of his own home country and its far-flung Empire.

CHAPTER XXIV.

The Reign of King Edward

The history of this reign--not long in years--is yet crowded with events, rich in national and Imperial developments, conspicuous in the importance of its discussions and international controversies. The first brief months, which have been already reviewed, saw the completion of the memorable Empire tour of the new Prince of Wales and the settling down of Australia to a life of national unity and progress; the conclusion of the South African War and the beginning of an extraordinary process of unification which was in a few years to evolve the Union of South Africa; the almost spectacular incidents of the Coronation and the important proceedings of the Colonial Conference of 1902. In July of this latter year the Marquess of Salisbury retired and was succeeded in the Premiers.h.i.+p by his nephew, Arthur J. Balfour. To the King this meant the removal of a strong arm and powerful intellect and respected personality from his side and increased the importance of his own experience and _prestige_ as a statesman.

Something has already been said of the qualities with which King Edward entered upon his task and with which it was conducted to the moment when in pa.s.sing to his rest he said: ”It is all over, but I think I have done my duty.” The unique feature of his career in a personal sense was his amazing popularity, the real affection with which every cla.s.s in the great community of the British Isles regarded him. In the days of his unofficial labours as Prince of Wales, Lord Beaconsfield greatly esteemed him and Mr. Gladstone was ”devotedly attached” to him. At the latter's funeral the Prince went up to Mrs. Gladstone and in a spirit of spontaneous courtesy bent over her hand and kissed it with an air of sympathy so great as to be beyond the expression of words. It was little acts such as this that won unstinted liking for the man as well as loyalty to the King. It was this magnetism of the kindly heart, this instinctive courtesy of character, coupled with a remarkable dignity of bearing at the right moment and in the right place, and a rare memory for faces and incidents and peoples and places, that made King Edward so truly the Sovereign of his people. In this connection a religious orator of the Radical type in London--Rev. R. J. Campbell--told an audience in Toronto, Canada, on July 22, 1903, that ”Queen Victoria is gone but her son remains and I would not exchange King Edward, with all the criticism that has been directed against him, for any Sovereign ruler on the face of the earth or any President of any Republic on either side of the water.”

Following the visit to Paris of this year, which paved the way for better relations in the future between Britain and France, the King made a successful tour of a part of Ireland--July 21st to August 1st--and impressed himself upon the mercurial temperament of the sons of Erin. In September came the memorable retirement of Mr. Chamberlain from the Balfour Government; his declaration of devotion to the new-old ideal of limited protective tariffs for the United Kingdom _plus_ preferential duties in favour of the external Empire; the split in the Conservative party and the presentation of a great issue to the people which, however, was clouded over by other policies in either party and had not, up to the time of the King's death, won a clear presentation to the people as a whole. Mr. Chamberlain's letter to Mr. Balfour dated September 8th expressed regret that the all-important question of fiscal reform had been made a party issue by its opponents; recognised the present political force of the cry against taxing food and the impossibility of immediately carrying his Preferential policy; suggested that the Government should limit their immediate advocacy to the a.s.sertion of greater fiscal freedom in foreign negotiations with a power of tariff retaliation, when necessary, as a weapon; and declared his own intention to stand aside, with absolute loyalty to the Government in their general policy but in an independent position, and with the intention of ”devoting myself to the work of explaining and popularizing those principles of Imperial union which my experience has convinced me are essential to our future welfare and prosperity.” In his reply the Premier paid high tribute to Mr. Chamberlain's services to the Empire, sympathized personally with his Imperial ideals and agreed with him that the time was not ripe for the Government or the country to go to the extreme length of his Preferential policy.

Mr. Chamberlain's action and policy gave a thrill of pleasant hopefulness to Imperialists everywhere; it stirred up innumerable comments in the British, Colonial and Foreign press; it made Germany pause in a system of fiscal retaliation and tariff war into which she had intended to enter with Canada--and with Australia and South Africa if they presumed to grant a tariff preference to Britain. Meanwhile, the King had suffered the loss, a personal as well as national one, of Lord Salisbury's retirement from office and his death not long afterwards; the Balfour-Chamberlain Government had struggled along until the Tariff Reform movement, as above described, broke in upon and dissipated the party's unanimity of opinion and uniformity of action; a long series of Liberal victories at bye-elections reduced the Conservative majority from 134 as it was in 1900 to 69 in November, 1905; Mr. Balfour, in his Newcastle speech of November 14th, defined his fiscal policy as (1) Retaliation with a view to compelling the removal of some of the restrictions in Foreign markets and (2) the calling of a Conference of Empire leaders to arrange, if possible, a closer commercial union of the Empire. As to himself he had never been and was not now ”a protectionist.” In December he resigned and the King called on Sir H.

Campbell-Bannerman, the Liberal Leader in the Commons, to form a Government.

A general election followed in which the Liberals swept the great towns of the country--excluding London and Birmingham--and came back with the largest majority in modern English history; the total of the Labour, Home Rule, Liberal and Radical majority being 376 over the supporters of Tariff Reform. The result, however, evoked on February 14, 1906, a declaration from Mr. Balfour in favour of ”a moderate general tariff on manufactured goods and the imposition of a small duty on Foreign corn,”

and this united the Conservative or Unionist party with the exception of about sixteen Free-trade members who still followed the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re. The rise of the Labour Party began at this election; the serious illness of Mr. Chamberlain followed and hampered Conservative work and progress; the retirement of the Premier took place early in 1908 and, on April of that year, the King called on Mr. Asquith to form the Ministry which carried its election in 1910 by so small a Liberal majority. The reconstruction of 1908 was notable for the rise or promotion of the fighting, aggressive, youthful elements in the new Liberalism--men like David Lloyd-George, Winston Churchill and Reginald McKenna. There followed the establishment of Old-Age Pensions at an initial expenditure of $40,000,000 a year; the prolonged and ultimately successful struggle to increase the taxation upon landed interests, property, and invested income by means of the much-discussed Budget of 1909; the natural resentment of the Lords, the Conservatives, and many who were neither--as ill.u.s.trated in the subsequent wiping out of the Liberal majority in England itself; the const.i.tutional issue which the Liberals so cleverly forced to the front with the House of Lords as their chief antagonists and which relegated Tariff Reform temporarily to the background; the prolonged period in which King Edward took minute and anxious and personal interest in the question.

There can be no doubt as to this interest or as to the natural and valid reasons for it. A House of Lords, either abolished or existing without power in the const.i.tution, would leave no check upon the Commons except the King and this might be bad for both the Commons and the Sovereign.

Over and over again in English history the people have reversed the action or vote of the Commons but if this was ever to be done in future it could only be through the interjection of the King's veto, and the bringing of the Crown into the hurly-burly of party struggle. This would be the very thing which all parties had hitherto endeavoured to prevent and for at least seventy years had been successful in preventing. Then came the general elections of 1909-10, with their continual query as to what the King would do if the Liberals did win. Would he accept the Government's policy and the proposed Commons legislation as to the Lords and thus take an active part in the destruction of one portion of the const.i.tution which he was pledged to guard--through and by means of the creation of hundreds of peers to swamp the Conservative vote in that House? Or would he take the situation boldly in hand and insist on another election with this question of practical abolition of the Lords as the distinct issue before the people? It was little wonder that His Majesty's physicians should declare after his death that the political situation had been one of its causes! It must be remembered that in all countries the Upper House and the aristocracy are natural and inevitable, if not necessary, adjuncts to and supporters of a Throne.

Where, as in Britain, that House and that aristocracy have upon the whole much to be proud of in personal achievement, much to be credited with in social legislation and still more to be approved of in the individual public work of its Salisburys, Roseberys, Devons.h.i.+res, and a mult.i.tude of other historic personalities with, also, a close and vital interest in the country through large landed responsibilities, the situation can readily be appreciated. Not that the Monarchy was an issue in itself; but there can be no doubt, despite such speeches as the following quotation from Mr. Winston Churchill's address at Southport on December 8, 1909, that King Edward felt the danger of weakening his immediate, natural and fitting environment of (with certain exceptions) an energetic and patriotic aristocracy surrounding a popular Throne:

”There is no difficulty in vindicating the principle of a hereditary monarchy. The experience of every country and of all the ages show the profound wisdom which places the supreme leaders.h.i.+p of the state beyond the reach of private ambition and above the shocks and changes of party strife. And, further, let it not be forgotten that we live under a limited and const.i.tutional monarch.

The Sovereign reigns but does not govern; that is a maxim we were all taught out of our school-books. The British monarchy has no interests divergent from those of the British people. It enshrines only those ideas and causes upon which the whole British people are united. It is based upon the abiding and prevailing interests of the nation and thus, through all the swift changes of the last hundred years, through all the wide developments of a democratic state, the English monarchy has become the most secure, as it is the most ancient and the most glorious monarchy in the whole of Christendom.”

While all this political change and controversy was going on the King was performing a mult.i.tude of personal and social and State duties.

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