The Royal Family.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18673, 23 April 1926, Page 8

The Royal Family.

When Queen Alexandra died one of the most radical of the English weeklies began a remarkable tribute to her real worth and popularity with the complaint that her death had been made the occasion in the daily Press of a great many words which should never have been printed. We are afraid that the "notorious sentimen"tality of the British public" which •was blamed for the folly of the newspapers then will make them foolish again this week in which a possible queen has been born. Though it is not for sentimental reasons that most members of the British nation are such stout royalists, births, marriages, and deaths must still be allowed to be special occasions. In any case the fact that the "new princess is the "only child born to a son of the "reigning sovereign" gives her an importance which justifies some sentimental extravagance. Succession to the throne in Britain is first in the male line, and it is not therefore necessary to indulge in any idle or foolish speculations about the Prince of Wales to make out a case for the importance of this happy event constitutionally, if it is good to have a throne it is good to have an unbroken line of suitable heirs, and it will certainly not be a disqualification, if it should one day happen that this little child should ascend the throne, that her breeding is on one Bide of the Scottish nobility, and on both sides pure British. In the bad old days it was dangerous to have-marriages between Royalty and the English nobility: if there is any danger to be avoided to-day it is entangling alliances with foreign Courts which are not as democratic as our own. There is no' longer any risk that the first, second, or fortysecond cousin of tho King will set up a rival Court in another part of the kingdom and plunge the oountry into dril war. There is really no risk either, of course, that if our princes do marry abroad, marriage will involve them, and the nation with them, in Buch dynastic disputes and disturbances as may still be European possibilities. Our Kings and Queens are trained from childhood, most admirably trained, to understand all the duties and difficulties of the extraordinary office to which they may eventually succeed, to that when they

marry abroad all that happens is that they make another foreigner British. It is, however, of some importance that the monarchy, while maintaining all. that "dignity withqnt power" which gives it what is so mnch better than power, should draw as near as possible to the people, and the infant in the Earl of Strathmore's London house i 3 nearer to the people than any possible occupant of the throne has been for generations.