THE PRINCE OF WALES.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1202, 15 March 1895, Page 30

THE PRINCE OF WALES.

MR STEAD’S OPINION THEREOF. From Our Own Correspondent. London, January 26. Mr W. T. Stead has for some years been kind enough to take a fatherly interest in the Prince of Wales. It will be remembered at the time of the Tranby Croft episode, when the Nonconformist Conscience was up in arms and serious persons of all denominations jumped on the Heir-Apparent, “the good man" amazed everybody by defending the Royal culprit. He also undertook the direction of H.R.H.’s career henceforward, indicating a number of ways in which the latter could convert himself info, an active power amongst the middleclass workers whom Mr Stead alone recognises as of much consequence. The Prince, there is reason to believe, did not show the editor of the Review of Reviews the gratitude he justly anticipated. Instead of sending for his mentor to Marlborough House, and having a chat with him over a flowing bowl of Easem’s Fruit Salt or a rollicking meal of So-and-So’s Little Liver Pills, he put the instructive article behind the fire. Mr Stead, however, feels sure the lessons it contained were not lost on His Royal Highness, and that recently during his visit to St. Petersburg they bore valuable fruit. In the current Review of Reviews, the editor emphasises the incalculable value of the Prince’s diplomatic efforts, and modestly takes the credit of having himself pulled the strings which set the figure in motion. This, however, is the good man’s attitude towards most things, as your readers know. Sitting in his sanctum at Norfolk House, surrounded by active and invisible spooks, and aided by the gentle “ Julia," Mr Stead plays “ Providence Junior " and sets the world to rights. One month he .improves Ghostland, the next Chicago, the next Woman’s Work, the next the Heir-Apparent, and so on. All these things have one peculiarity in common. They make splendid “ copy." Moreover when the “ copy" becomes stale the enterprise is apt to languish also. This does not happen from any insincerity on Mr Stead’s part. It is simply because he’s first and before everything a journalist. His greatest gift is the knowledge how to treat a subject so as to make it “ catch-on" at once. The article on the Prince of Wales in the current Review of Reviews must be pronounced a capital ■ example of this. Read it through and ybu will easily understand my meaning. The following excerpts hardly do the “good man" justice: — ' For the first time almost in his career, says Mr Stead, the Prince of Wales has ha*d a chance of being something more than a mere figurehead, a stately and genial figurehead no doubt, but a figurehead notwithstanding. Figureheads are useful, indispensable indeed, and no man would have a right to resent a destiny which gives him an opportunity of playing.figurehead respectably in such an Empire as ours. But the Prince has had enough of that; he has been leading for nearly fifty years what may be regarded, politically, as more or less a suppressed life. Not until the very end of last year was he able to utilise the accumulated experiences of a lifetime and the wealth of his unique position in rendering a service to the State, which, even his enemies being judges, deserves the grateful recognition of mankind. • ..... UNCLE AND NEPHEW. _ There is no need to repeat the circumstances under which the Prince went to Russia. When the new Czar Nicholas 111. looked up from the bier of his father and saw his uncle standing by his side, the heart of the young man, says Mr Stead, went out to the Prince. He responded to that unspoken appeal with a tenderness that was natural to the affectionate nature of the older man. It was the young Czar’s first great grief, whereas the Prince had passed through many a bitter experience in the hour of death.

After the first gush of grief had passed, it was impossible but that thoughts of the relations between the two Empires should not have crossed the minds of both. These two men share between them the over-lordskip of Asia. No two men on this planet ever represented so vast a range of Imperial power as the first mourners at the bier of Alexander 111. Behind them stretched into the infinite distance dim uncounted millions of Asiatics whose prosperity and peace depended almost absolutely on the harmony and good relations existing between these two mourners and the peoples whom they represented. . After the funeral came the wedding, and the Prince, who had acted a 3 chief mourner at the one, wa3 not less conspicuous at the other, Such intimate

relations sustained so long could not fail to impress the imagination of Europe. AN ADVANTAGE OF THE MONARCHY. It is true, continues Mr Stead, that with the most cordial relations existing between the Czar and the Prince it would be quite possible for England and Russia to be on the worst of terms if at Downing street there were to be established such pestilent enemies of the human race- as the Jingoes who, in 1878, urged ns. almost to the verge of war. But fortunately the efforts of the Prince in promoting a good understanding between the two Courts has been ably seconded by the wise and prescient diplomacy of Lord Rosebery. From the point of view of solid business John Bull does well to maintain the monarchy, Mr Stead thinks, if only because it enables him to have ready to hand representatives who can speak the dialect and are bred and born in the atmosphere of the Royal caste. Royalties live in a world apart; they are all like, more or less, what4lie.Mik ad o used to be in Japan—no one can get at them to really know what they think excepting those who belong to the same caste. Hence there is no reason to doubt that the Prince was able to get on better with the Czar than any statesman, no matter how distinguished, who may be the representative of the French Republic, or who might be selected by the English constituencies to conduct their foreign affairs. A SAFE PRINCE. The danger which might arise from this utilisation of Princes as informal Royal plenipotentiaries for'the promotion of peace and goodwill among the nations is minimised by the character of the Prince of Wales.

A cleverer man, or one more eaten up by personal ambition, might play . the mischief in the circumstances in which the Prince is placed at present, but he appreciates only too well the limitations and conditions of constitutional monarchy, and in all the discussions that have gone on during 'the last two months over the new departure in our Russian policy not even one passing thought of uneasiness has cast a shadow over Downing street as to what the Prince might be after. Finally, Mr Stead speculates whether the Prince who has built a bridge of cordiality and mutual understanding between the two great Empires might not be able to render a similar service at home by “bridging over the gulf between different classes which if is the tendency, of increased wealth and increased civilisation to widen." ;