A CANDID MEMOIR.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15949, 7 June 1912, Page 7

A CANDID MEMOIR.

BIOGRAPHY OF KING EDWARD. EFFECT OF EARLY TRAINING. HIS WORK AS.PEACEMAKER. United Press Association—By Electrio Telegraph—Copyright. (Received June (J, 8.25. p.m.) ».••':' . LONDON, June 0. The outstanding feature of the new volume of tho " Dictionarv of National j Biography" is Sir Sidney Lee's can-1 did memoir of King Edward, largely based on unpublished and unwritten sources. The memoir snys that Queen Victoria's obstinate refusal to grant the Prince genuine political responsibility or settled solid occupation somewhat affected his moral robustness, while the gloom of his mother's court helped to evoke a reaction against the conventional strictness of his upbringing. Among the, proposals for employment Queen Victoria vetoed, was Mr Gladstone's in 1873 that the Prince s.hould join the India Council Cabinet. A key giving access to foreign despatches was riot granted until 1895. At his accession, King. Edward was a stranger to the administration details of his great' office, when he was too old to' repair the neglect in his political training. Though at the outset there were indications that he overestimated the. Sovereign's power, this was due to inexperience and later, in home politics he was for tho most part content ...with the. role of onlooker, viewing detachedly the programmes of all parties. He earnestly desired a peaceful tion of the conflict between the House of Lords and the House, of Commons, but passively acquiesced in Mr. Asquith's plans. .King Edward found no comfort in the action of any. of the parties to the strife, but to ""the last privately cherished the conviction that peaco would be reached without the creation of peers. Though there were short seasons of varianoo between him and the Kaiser, he could not be charged with deliberate, systematic hostility towards the German people. His personal feeling was very superficially affected by the mutual jealousy which grew up in his reign between Britain and Germany. Ho was a peacemaker, not through excess of any diplomatic initiative or ingenuity, but. by faith in the blessings of peace. By tho influence passively attaching to his high station and temperament, his personality greatly strengthened tho hold of royalty on the public affection. Probably no King had won so affectionately the good will at once of foreign peoples and his own subjects. A man of the world, he laoked the intellectual equipment of a thinker, yet always eager for information, he gathered orally very varied'stores of knowledge.