KING AND DEMOCRAT

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 106, 7 May 1935, Page 12

KING AND DEMOCRAT

FOREIGNERS PUZZLED.

REASON FOR OUR LOYALTY.

TALK BY MR. C. E. ARCHIBALD

"There arc now very few kings in Europe and foreigners are curious- to know exactly what is our attitude towards our King," said Mr. C. E. Archibald, secretary of the League of Nations Union, in a talk to the Epsom Girls' Grammar School this morning.

"In the opinion of foreigners," continued Mr. Archibald, "we are a very peculiar people. We have long been known as 'Insular Britons.' On the one hand, we exhibit a lack of seriousness in matters that concern us; we look upon it as somewhat bad form to enthuse. On the other hand we display a whole-hearted loyalty and devotion to the King and the Royal Family. Therefore, to foreigners we are simply one big conundrum. Old Dynasties Gone. "The reason they do not understand our intense loyalty to our Sovereign is mainly due to the fact that they have never experienced such a King. On the Continent, the ruling houses have persisted in demanding the preservation of medieval privileges. It has been a struggle between commoners no longer shackled by the bonds of ignorance, and monarchs who still believed in the divine right of kings. The people could not visualise them in any other light than tyrants with the power of life and death. As a result of the conflict, old and proud dynasties have given place to presidents and dictators. And the change has been accompanied by assassination or by abdication with the bare escape from death.

"Because we still honour our King, because we know that a good king can also be a good democrat, we are not understood."

Mr. Archibald said that the King was a good democrat as the result of a process of evolution which first expressed itself when the barons, at Runnymede, by means of Magna Carta, wrested from King John the powers of an absolute monarch. But the process of evolution was slow. Subsequent Kings retained their belief in divine right and sought to flicii rroui the people their charter of liberty. It bccame necessary at times to re-enact the provisions of Magna Carta. The evolution, though hindered, pursued its course until it received the hall mark of authority in the reign of Queen Victoria, the grandmother of King George. In close co-operation witli her statesmen, the standard of freedom which we now enjoy was effectually established.

In her footsteps came her son, King Edward VII. He was what is known as a man of the world. He was more than a King. He was a royal ambassador through whose tact and ability the most cordial relations were established with other countries. "Is it any wonder, then, that King George V., nurtured and trained by such wise progenitors, should have developed into a good King and democrat?" continued Mr. Archibald. Thought For Subjects. "In every crisis that has arisen in his reign, his first thought has been for the safety, the welfare, and the prosperity of his subjects. There has been no royal aloofness in the palace of the King. Unlike most foreign monarchs, he has moved among his people. Scarcely a royal personage outside the British Empire, or a president or a dictator, daro appear in public without a very obvious and extensive bodyguard. King George may walk abroad in safety, for his bodyguard is his people. As his years have increased, he and his Queen have seen to it that their Royal family have stepped into the arena of life, placing the public weal before all personal considerations.

"Because Continental people cannot conceive of such a monarch, agitators have sought to incite rebellion, only to be faced by a rampart of loyal subjects before the throne of their beloved King, against which the machinations of enemies have crashed in vain.

"So it is," concluded Mr. Archibald, "on this great jubilee, with the march of the rising sun over each link in the chain of Empire, there will resound the lusty, time-honoured toast, ' Gentlemen, the King.'"