to be transacted calling for the presence of a Minister. The plea may be admitted, but nevertheless if so the result was exactly the opposite to that which it was desired to attain. The inference drawn in Germany was not that His Majesty was enjoying a fam. ily meeting in the Baltic, but that the business in hand was so mysterious, and so personal, that Ministers were purposely not allowed to be in attendance. It is true that the King was accompanied by Sir Charles Hardinge, but it can hardly surprise any one that the Germans fail to take Sir Charles Hardinge seriously when he is put forward as an equivalent for an absent Secretary of State and Cabinet Minister. His presence, indeed, emphasized the significance of Sir Edward Grey's absence; for he is believed in Germany to be the King's factotum, his political private secretary, with no other purpose in life than that of anticipating His Majesty's wishes and obeying His Majesty's will.

Even this was not all. His Majesty was accompanied to Reval by Admiral Sir John Fisher and by General French, one of the most distinguished officers in the British Army. Why, asked the Germans, did the King take the heads of the fighting services to meet the Emperor unless some naval and military alliance was toward? The answer which satisfies Englishmen, that Fisher and French are invaluable ingredients in a picnic party, is angrily rejected by our suspicious cousins. They regard Sir John Fisher as the most dangerous man in the British Empire. He is believed to lie awake o' nights planning how to repeat Copenhagen at Kiel, and when he sleeps he dreams of new monsters of the deep which will make even the German Dreadnoughts as obsolete as the Roman galleys. That such an ogre should be the most delightful companion on a sea trip, that he has the charm of a

schoolboy and the zest for dancing of a girl of eighteen, that he is as facile princeps in the ball-room as on the quarter-deck, and that it was his social qualities as an ideal companion and conversationalist rather than his naval genius that secured him the honor of a command to accompany the King is frankly incomprehensible to the average German. The Kaiser, who knows Admiral Fisher, and who also knows his uncle, would find no difficulty in accepting this explanation. But the majority of Germans have not these advantages.

The official communiqué published by the German Government, rebuking the methods, false and unnational, employed to disturb the "confidence and calm which alone are worthy of a great and peaceable nation," says:

It should not be forgotten that a businesslike and sound solution, to

achieve which is the common interest of all the Powers, is not facilitated by nervous and exaggerated enumeration of possible dangers.

Therefore the supreme necessity on the part of all concerned is to avoid giving occasion for nervous alarms. It is idle to say that there is no justification for their fears. When His Majesty's chauffeur has to pass a frightened horse in a narrow road, he does not sound his gong and increase his speed because the horse has no reason to be alarmed. On the contrary, he goes as quietly as possible, recognizing that the unreasonable nervousness or the horse is a fact in nature to be reckoned with, allowed for, and provided against. It might be well, in dealing with Germany, to be as prudent, as cautious, and as practical as would the chauffeur.

King Edward, at Reval, referred, in a phrase which has since made the tour of the world, to his confident expectation that the meeting would "con

duce to the satisfactory settlement in an amicable manner of some momentous questions in the future." We all hope that the anticipation may be realized. But we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that its realization is more likely to be retarded than to be promoted by emphasizing the increased ability of the English and Russian Empires to get their own way as the result of their understanding. "Momentous questions" in the modern sense can only be settled by general agreement. Any apparent desire to settle things by dual or triple understandings challenges the uninvited parties to trip up the proposed arrangement. The Morocco trouble sprang directly from an agreement between a group of the Powers, to which some of those who afterwards met at Algiers were not parties.

It is a homely adage that it is impossible to eat one's cake and have it too. So it is impossible to utilize the Monarch as Commis-voyageur extraordinaire of the British Empire without exposing ourselves to the risk of having his personal functions exaggerated to his detriment and to ours. That the King has no personal policy as distinct from that of his official advisers is so obvious that it is almost an insult to assert it. No one likes to have to declare that he is not addicted to the stealing of silver spoons. But when our over-zealous friends and envious foes alike declare that we are experts in the appropriation of spoons, even such a disclaimer may be necessary. That His Majesty takes no personal part in the negotiations of Anglo-Russian Conventions and the like is equally obvious. Yet journals boasting an immense circulation speak of Sir Edward Grey as "ably seconding his Sovereign." The fact is that even the great services which His Majesty is in a position to render to the cause of peace are endangered by such an in

version of parts. The King may be our Diplomat-King, but kings are only available as diplomatists when they are associated with the policy of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Even if the policy of Ministers had been originated by His Majesty, the more necessary it would be, in the interest of the Crown itself, that no credit should be claimed for the Sovereign. Credit cannot be claimed when a policy succeeds without discredit attaching to the originator when that policy fails. If the exclusive responsibility of the Minister is impaired, it is disastrous for the King. "Sole action, for the Sovereign," said Mr. Gladstone,

would mean undefended, unprotected action-the armor of irresponsibility would not cover the whole body against sword or spear, a head would project beyond the awning and would invite sunstroke.

As his most precious inheritance, His Majesty is heir to that palladium of the Constitutional monarchy, the theory that the King can do no wrong. It is fully to be expected that he will not allow any glamour of popularity or any glozing words of flattering sycophants to beguile him into sacrificing the substance of impeccability for the phantom of personal prestige.

"Since the King can do no wrong," says Mr. Lowell, in his recently published work on "The Government of England,"

he can do neither right nor wrong. He must not be praised or blamed for political acts; nor must his ministers make public the fact that any decision on a matter of State was actually made by him. His name must not be brought into political controversy in any way, or his personal wishes referred to in argument, either within or without Parliament. (p. 39.)

A still greater authority has said the same thing in even more emphatic terms. Mr. Gladstone wrote:

Dignity and visible authority lie wholly with the wearer of the Crown, but labor mainly and responsibility wholly with its servants. From mere labor power may be severed, but not from labor joined with responsibility. This capital and vital consequence flows out of the principle that the political action of the Monarch shall everywhere be mediate and conditional upon the concurrence of confidential advisers. It is impossible to reconcile any, even the smallest, abatement of the doctrine, with the perfect and absolute immunity of the Sovereign from consequences. (Gleanings, p. 230.)

When Mr. Escott tells us that "to the entire satisfaction of his subjects, King Edward has informally become the head of our diplomatic system" (Escott, p. 401), and when the same authority asks why the King cannot become his own Foreign Minister, it is evident that ideas are in the air which may imperil the very basis of the throne. Contrast with these suggestions the sagacious observations of Lord Esher on the importance of avoiding the attempt to make the Sovereign the master workman of his realm:

Nor is it important nor desirable to attempt to lift the veil of mystery which to a large extent even in our prying times conceals from vulgar eyes the influence of the sovereign. In a great degree mystery and secrecy are vital to the maintenance of Royal authority. A monarchy to be stable should subsist in twilight, and an Emperor of China possesses a stronger hold on the imagination of his subjects than a bon bourgeois like Louis Philippe of France. Some instinct of this kind has guided the steps of the Queen throughout her reign, so that in spite of her simple tastes of sympathy more freely given to the poor than to the mighty, and of the lights which by her own published books she has thrown on the domestic life of the Court, she has nevertheless contrived to conceal from the public the nature of the power wielded for so many years over her Ministers as well as the influence she has exercised over

social and political events. (Yoke of Empire, p. 193.)

She

Since these words were written that veil of mystery has been largely lifted, in part, by Lord Esher himself, with results which do not altogether tend to encourage His Majesty in emulating the achievements of his predecessor. Queen Victoria was an indefatigable worker, one of those who scorn delights and live laborious days. "Blessed be drudgery" might have been the motto of the Victorian reign. toiled like a galley slave through interminable despatches. Until the closing years of her reign she always had a Cabinet Minister in attendance, and she never strayed from home. King Edward possesses many admirable qualities, but other pursuits have greater attractions for him than the toiling and moiling through the arid wilderness of despatches and blue books. He is frequently away from home, and when he goes abroad his Ministers are left at home.

All this is compatible with popularity, and with a certain amount of factitious prestige; it is also compatible with a considerable rôle in public affairs. But it was by her laborious and conscientious discharge of public duty, for the most part unseen, that the late Queen revived the monarchy in England, and if it is to be maintained, Lord Esher's words may well be borne in mind:

The character and rule of Queen Victoria have set a high standard, below which it will be impossible for a monarch to fall without personal disaster. Future monarchs will have to beware of the example of Queen Victoria. (Ib., p. 197.)

Let me recall the words used by Mr. Gladstone as, the laws governing the exercise of a direct and personal influence by the Sovereign in the whole work of the Government:

The amount of that influence must vary greatly, according to character, to capacity, to experience in affairs, to tact in the application of a pressure which never is to be carried to extremes, to patience in keeping up the continuity of a multitudinous supervision, and, lastly, to close presence at the seat of government; for, in many of its necessary operations, time is the most essential of all elements, and the most scarce. (Gleanings, p. 233.)

King Edward has character, capacity, experience and tact. But patience

in "the continuity of a multitudinous supervision," and "close presence at the seat of Government" are hardly compatible with the ubiquity of a Diplomat-King frequently on the road.

I close this paper with an expression of profound gratitude to the King for having recently administered to sycophants and flatterers a signal rebuke. The notion that he aspired to play a governing rôle in the affairs of State has been so diligently disseminated that his absence from London at the recent Ministerial crisis had all the effect of a startling surprise. As a late Prime Minister pointed out, authority has given place to influence in almost every department of Royal activity; but he added:

Not that even power is entirely gone. The whole power of the State periodiThe Contemporary Review.

cally returns into the Royal hands whenever a ministry is changed.

One of the fateful moments when the whole power of the State had returned to the King's hands occurred last spring. The occurrence was not unforeseen. His Majesty was at Biarritz, and a Ministerial crisis found the Sovereign in partibus. It is true that he returned to England for the Council, at which the new Ministers were sworn in. Some of the newspapers grumbled. But they overlooked the significance of the object-lesson which His Majesty had administered to those who at home and abroad had been deluding themselves with vain dreams as to the revival of personal rule. They might have learned from the "episode de Biarritz" the true estimate in which their notions are held by the Sovereign himself. A similar lesson, administered as effectively to those who indulge in similar day dreams as to His Majesty pursuing a personal policy aiming at the isolation and throttling of Germany would contribute to the confidence of the world. How that lesson should be administered the Sovereign is in a much better position to decide than the writer.

1

A Loyal Subject.

III.

To little Saleh, now some fourteen years of age, that voyage across the trackless seas was in the beginning a sort of dreadful nightmare. During the first few days all other emotions were forgotten in the compelling agonies of sea-sickness, and the boy went through the successive stages of the malady, fearing at the outset that he was like

to die, and later that no such good fortune awaited him. By the time the vessel reached Ceylon, however, he had found his sea-legs, and was able to give his undivided attention to his mental miseries.

The first sight of the coast, with its clusters of nodding palms and its shroud of vivid greenery, comforted him a little; for here, at any rate, was

est and fruit-groves such as he had always known, not the vast emptiness of the sea. Colombo itself, too, brought some measure of consolation; for there were Malays here in fair numbers, men with whom he could converse in his own tongue, albeit they spoke a sadly degenerate jargon, whereas on board the ship, since he as yet had no English, he was to all intents and purposes dumb. The white man in whose charge he was travelling spoke Malay fluently, but Saleh, who had known him hitherto only as a high official, regarded him with awe, and gave him none of his shy confidence. A further acquaintance with Colombo, however, ended by increasing the gnawing home sickness from which the lad was suffering. His only conception of the whole round earth was as one vast tangle of forest through which the big rivers crawled seaward, wherefore, to him, the dissimilarity of Ceylon to the Malay Peninsula was more striking than its resemblance. The place was, in a disquieting fashion, reminiscent of his fatherland-a land of shadows filled with the echoes of distant voices; but it was to the boy only a mocking reflection of the reality, and its points of difference jarred on him like discordant notes. On every side, it seemed to him, he was met by sorry distortions of familiar scenes. It was as though he looked upon his home in a bad dream, and beheld it hideously deformed and misshapen. He went back to the ship with a heart heavy as lead. The vessel, her coal-bunkers replen ished, put to sea once more, and began to thrust her nose into the boisterous waters of the Indian Ocean. The dreary interminable days, their monotony unbroken by the smallest happenings, trailed one after the other in slow procession; and Saleh, who did not care to read turgid Malay verse, and was too shy to talk much with the only man

learned for the first time what is meant by solitude and weariness of spirit. Each dull hour heaped up the burden that was crushing him. He was in the grip of a grinding homesickness--a yearning so acute that it was as agonizing as an aching tooth, forcing itself upon his attention insistently, maddening him with a pain which yet lacked the relief of expres sion, and haunting his very slumbers. He longed with unspeakable intensity for all familiar things-the faces that he knew, even though they belonged to men and women for whom he cared nothing; for the sound of his mother tongue spoken with the native accent; for the scene, the color, the very atmosphere of his home; for the trivial things of every day, so little valued when they were his, which hitherto had made up life for him. The depression, inseparable from lack of occupation or interest, deepened the gloom of the nostalgia which darkened his days; but the emotion that throughout oppressed him most sorely was fearblank, unreasoning fear. The immensity of the world was a new fact which had been flashed upon his intelligence suddenly, had been revealed to him abruptly with no course of preparation to soften the shock. It smote now upon his understanding, numbing, cowing him. He, who hitherto had never wandered more than a dozen miles from the village in which he had been born, who had lived in a land whose every inhabitant was known to him, found himself now adrift upon the bosom of a boundless sea, with countless eyes, he fancied, glaring at him with a cruel glitter from those restless waters, and the dome of the unpitying heavens arching over him. On board the ship he was in the midst of strangers, men who were not only unacquainted with him, but belonged to a different race, followed strange customs, professed to