AND NOW?

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1201, 9 August 1911, Page 5

AND NOW?

THE SPLENDID POSSIBILITIES 01* THE TIMF-. (Bv H. G. Wells.) Tho bunting and the crimson ranisl from the..streets. Already the vast army of improvishod carpenters that tho Coronation has created set themselves to tho work of demolition, nnd soon every road' that converges upon Central London will be choked again with great loads of timber—but this time going outwards'—as our capital emerges from this unprecedented inundation of loyalty. Tho meal elaborately conceived, the most stately, oi all recorded British Coronations is past. What new nhnss in the life of our nation, and our Empire does this tremendous ceremony inaugurate? The questiou is inevitable. Thero is nothing in all the KOcial existence of men so full of challenge as the crowning of a King. It is tho end oi tho overture; the curtain rises. Tliis is a new beginning-place for histories.

To us, the great mass of common Englishmen, who have no place in tho hierarchy of our land, who do not attend Courts nor encounter uniforms, whotJ function is at most spiictacular, who stand in tho street and watch the dignitaries and tho liveries pass by, this sense of critical expectation is perhaps preater than it is for tho.-xj moro immediately concerned in. the spectacle. They have had their partf ';o play, their symbolic acts to perforir, they liave sat in their privileged place.-, and wo have, waited at the barriers until their comfort and dignity was assured. 1 can conceive many ol them, a. litilo fatigued, preparing now lor social dispersal, relaxing comfortably into gossip, discussing the details of thtso events with an air cf things accomplished. I hey will decide whether (he Coronation has been a success and whether everything has or has not pawed off very well, lor us in the great crowd nothing "has as yet succeeded or pawed off- well or ill. Wo are intent upon a King of whom we know {is yet very little, but who ha*, neverthe. less, roused such expectation as no King before him has done since Tu'dor limes, )n the presence of gigantic opportunities. I here is a conviction widespread among us—his own words, perhaps, have done most to create it—that King Georgo is inspired, as no recent predecessor hns'been inspired, by the conception of kingship, that his is to bo no role of almost indifferent abstinence from the. broad processes of our national and imneriol doyelopment. That greater public life which is nbovo party and above creed and sect has taken hold of his imagination ho is to be no crowned imago of unity and correlation, a layer of foundation-stones and a signature to documents, but an actor in our drama, a living Prince. We, tho innumerable, democracy of individually unimportant men, have'felt (ho noed for such a Prince. Our consciousness of defects of fields of effort unfilled, of vast possibilities neglected and slipping away from us for over, has never really slumbered again since the chastening experiences of tho Boer War. Since then tho national spirit, hampered though it is by the traditions of party government and a heavy legacy of intellectual and wcial heaviness, has been in uneasy and ineffectual revolt against deadnc.ss, against stupidity and slackness, against waste and hypocrisy in every department of life. Wo have come, to seo more and more clearly how little, we can hopo for from politicians, societies, and organised movements in these essential things. It is this that has invested tho energy nnd manhood, tho untried possibilities, of the new Kins with so radiant a light of hope for us. Think what it may mean for us all—l write, as one of that great ill-informed multitude, sincerely and gravely patriotic, outside the echoes of Court gossip and the easy knowledge of exalted society— if our King does indeed care, for these wider and profoumler things! Suppeso wo have a King nt last who cares for the advancement of science, who is willing to do the, hundred things that arc so easy in his position to increase research, to honour and tb share in scientifio thought. Supposo we have a King whoso head riwis above the level of the Court artist, and who not only can but'will appeal, to. tlje 'latent and discouragcd'paWer of artmic, creation in our race. Supposo we have" a King who understands the neod for incessant, acute criticism to keep our collectivo activities intelligent and efliciont, and for a flow, of bold, unhampored thought through every department of tha national life,- a King liberal without laxity and patriotic without pettiness or vulgarity. Such, it teems to us, who wait at present almost inexpressively out&ide tho immediate clamours of a mere artificial loyalty, are- the splendid possibilities of the time.

For England is no exhausted or decoying country. It is rich with nn unmoa. sured capacity for generous responses. It needs but a quickening spirit upon the throne, always the traditional centre of its respect, (o rise from even the appoar.anco of decadence—"Daily Mail."