Part 22 (2/2)

A short but stately cere the Queen then followed The Archbishop of York officiated and four Peeresses upheld the Cloth of Gold over Her Majesty as she was anointed upon the head A ring was placed upon her finger with a brief prayer, and a sceptre in her hand with the folloords: ”Grant unto this thy servant Alexandra, our Queen, that by the powerful and h dignity which she hath obtained, through Jesus Christ our Lord” Her Majesty was then escorted fro as she passed hi and Queen then passed to the Altar together, taking off their Crowns and kneeling on faldstools and His Majesty formally offered the Sacra his headshi+p of the National Church, the King returned with his Consort to their chairs and listened to some brief prayers Thence they returned to the Altar, received Communion from the Archbishop of Canterbury and then passed into the Chapel of Edward the Confessor accompanied by a stately procession There they were arrayed in Royal robes of purple and velvet, in place of the mantels previously worn, and passed with slow and stately dignity down the nave, out to their carriage and thence through ham Palace

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 hiseyes Dr Teious zeal, but in these declining days the , the memory and the eyes found difficulties in the sole 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 e The Royal patient was transforuardian of the Archbishop's weakness When tendering his hoed Primate almost fainted and was unable to rise from his knees until His Majesty assisted him Prior to the actual Coronation, Mr Edwin A Abbey, RA, who had been co 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 duchess 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 cereue The King has had a good night, and his condition is in every way satisfactory” Being Sunday, special services were held in the St Jah House Chapel, and at St Margaret's, Weste to the nation was h 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 Ho 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 Kingdo 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 deterift to the nation” Following the Coronation came multitudes of editorial comments upon the event, and one of the most concise and expressive was that of the London _Tinificance of the Coronation ceremony on Saturday lay in its profound sincerity, as a solen and his subjects, ratified by oath, and blessed by the highest dignitaries of the National Church It was a covenant between a free people, accusto to statutes in Parlia, and a supplication fro may be endoith 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 cere bond between the King and subjects Thefeature of the Coronation was that it was the first to be attended by the states Colonies, and by the feudatory Princes of India”

With the event also ca of Kingshi+p” On August 11th the King held a Council at Buckingha and new es 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 ere present at the event, in a representative capacity, fro 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 Cha Sir Wilfrid and Lady Laurier After thepinned 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 reat pleasure to see you here to-day and to have the opportunity of expressing h appreciation of your patriotisuished 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 ofday the Indian troops sent froreat Eastern realm to honour the Coronation of its Emperor were reviewed at the same place

His Majesty wore a jewelled shich 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 reat 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 constituted theeneral 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 folloords: ”I wish to convey to all ranks the high satisfaction it has given ent fro tothe advantage of seeing you, but I anize a at Delhi duringthe 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 n of a wide-flung realeneration before could have dominated the seas of the world and put all civilized nations under tribute Gathered together fro squadron; without the detachn waters or Colonial stations, it included 20 battleshi+ps, 24 cruisers and 47 torpedo crafts, with an outer fringe of foreign vessels contributed in complimentary fashi+on to honour the occasion Froreat gri's yacht approached the first line of shi+ps, a hundred Royal salutes reatest battle-fields of history had never heard As the King, in Admiral's uniform, stood upon the deck of his vessel and passed 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 shore to shore, and shi+p to shi+p, was echoed froain fro was deeply naled 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 nuhts to illulamour of fairy land over the splendid scene

Meanwhile, in the , 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 kindthe official Naval Review, the King on the next day visited the fleet in a storh certaindispersed to its different local stations

On his return to London he found the Shah of Persia a guest of the nation and awaiting for Edward took up again his unceasing round of duty and cereh responsibility In the past year or two he had gone through every variety of emotional experience and official work and brilliant cere of a nation and empire; his own assumption 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 froe 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 ho E Edward

The history of this reign--not long in years--is yet croith 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 E 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 is of the Colonial Conference of 1902 In July of this latter year the Marquess of Salisbury retired and was succeeded in the Pre thisarm and powerful intellect and respected personality from his side and increased the ie_ as a states has already been said of the qualities hich King Edward entered upon his task and hich it was conducted to theto 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 a popularity, the real affection hich every class in the great coarded 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 syreat as to be beyond the expression of words It was little acts such as this that won unstinted liking for the netism of the kindly heart, this instinctive courtesy of character, coupled with a reht place, and a rare memory for faces and incidents and peoples and places, that n 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 re Edward, with all the criticisn 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 ust 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 lidom _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 ti's death, won a clear presentation to the people as a whole Mr Chamberlain's letter to Mr Balfour dated Septeret that the all-important question of fiscal refornised the present political force of the cry against taxing food and the i his Preferential policy; suggested that the Government should lireater fiscal freedootiations with a power of tariff retaliation, when necessary, as a weapon; and declared his own intention to stand aside, with absolute loyalty to the Governeneral policy but in an independent position, and with the intention of ”devotingthose principles of Imperial union which my experience has convinced me are essential to our future welfare and prosperity” In his reply the Preh tribute to Mr Chamberlain's services to the Ereed with him that the tio to the extreth of his Preferential policy

Mr Chaave a thrill of pleasant hopefulness to Imperialists everywhere; it stirred up innun 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 presurant a tariff preference to Britain Meanwhile, the King had suffered the loss, a personal as well as national one, of Lord Salisbury's retire afterwards; the Balfour-Cha until the Tariff Reform movement, as above described, broke in upon and dissipated the party's unani 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 conof a Conference of Ee, if possible, a closer commercial union of the Empire As to himself he had never been and was not now ”a protectionist” In Dece called on Sir H

Campbell-Bannerman, the Liberal Leader in the Coeneral election followed in which the Liberals swept the great towns of the country--excluding London and Birlish history; the total of the Labour, Ho 376 over the supporters of Tariff Reform The result, however, evoked on February 14, 1906, a declaration froeneral tariff on oods and the in corn,”

and this united the Conservative or Unionist party with the exception of about sixteen Free-trade members who still followed the Duke of Devonshi+re The rise of the Labour Party began at this election; the serious illness of Mr Charess; 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 proressive, youthful elee, Winston Churchill and Reginald McKenna There followed the establishe Pensions at an initial expenditure of 40,000,000 a year; the prolonged and ultile to increase the taxation upon landed interests, property, and invested incoet of 1909; the natural resentment of the Lords, the Conservatives, and many ere neither--as illustrated in the subsequent wiping out of the Liberal land itself; the constitutional issue which the Liberals so cleverly forced to the front with the House of Lords as their chief antagonists and which relegated Tariff Refored 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 constitution, would leave no check upon the Coht be bad for both the Colish 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 caeneral elections of 1909-10, with their continual query as to what the King would do if the Liberals did win Would he accept the Governislation as to the Lords and thus take an active part in the destruction of one portion of the constitution 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 achieveislation and still more to be approved of in the individual public work of its Salisburys, Roseberys, Devonshi+res, and a multitude 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 Dece his i environetic and patriotic aristocracy surrounding a popular Throne:

”There is no difficulty in vindicating the principle of a hereditary es show the profound wisdom which places the supreme leadershi+p of the state beyond the reach of private aes of party strife And, further, let it not be forgotten that we live under a lins but does not govern; that is a ht out of our school-books The British ent 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 developlish monarchy has becolorious monarchy in the whole of Christendoe and controversy was going on the King was perfor a multitude of personal and social and State duties