GOD SAVE THE KING!

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4264, 25 January 1901, Page 4

GOD SAVE THE KING!

“The King is dead. Long live tie King.” So runs the old French saying, and its inner burden is that individual monarchs come and go, playing for a brief stay their part of success ox failure, in the great pageant of the world’s stage, and then depart, but that there must be no break in the continuity. The ruler must bd there, and the official honour vouchsafed to the Royal dead of yesterday is perpetuated in the Royal living of to-day. While yet the Empire rings with the mournful echoes of universal laraeintation over the passing away, into, the great Ewigkeit, of one whose very name is destined, in British annals, to become a synonym for patriotism, dignity and nobility, any discussion as to the personal characteristics of the ruler who succeeds may, to some, appear both premature and irreverent. Thd future interests and welfare of the British nation are, however, so intimately connected with the personality and the influence of the Sovereign at to fully justify some sober and careful consideration of the past career, private and public, of him who is now called upon to I

succeed to the British Crown- During the years of the new King’s earlier manhood Rumour and Scandal did not fail to busy themselves with his name. Married to a handsome and amiable Princess, who has become, with the British people, as great a personal favourite as the late Queen Victoria herself, the Prince was, it is notorious, not always so regaraful of his own personal reputation or of the serious responsibilities of his position as he might have been. Modern proto types of Bardolph and Poins were occasionally, so it was openly stated during the seventies, numbered amongst his more intimate associates, and if there were no open scandal, sufficient was known as to a reckless conduct of life to reader the public mind a prey to grave anxiety as to future developments. With increasing years, and weightier domestic and State responsibilities, the follies and error; of “hot, tempestuous youth” gradually gave way to a more proper sense of what was due to. his own personal honour and to the dignity of his position. A staidness and sobriety cf conduct replaced the youthful tendency to roystering, and the Prince gradually but surely became what he has beau for many years, the able and evervekome representative of a Sovereign whose age and increasing feebleness prevented her from talcing personal part In many public functions, and a chief citizen wtio devoted the larger part of a busy life to stimulating by his personal interest the success of numberless enterprises calculated to ha of service in furthering the moral, intellectual and material welfare of the people over whom birth and destiny were end day to call upon him to rule. The serious illness which brought him, in the winter of 1878 and 1870, to the very portals of Death, and his recovery from which was made the occasion for a function so impressively solemn as to move the heart of the nation as probably during the century it had never been moved before, was, it is generally believed, the turning point in the Prince’s career. From that time forward Scandal has untainted his name, save in the chronicling of peccadilloes so trivial that their mere recording savoured of irresponsible rumour or of sheer malice.

In many ways the! Prince is well equipped for the kingly role he now possesses. Personally a man of great tact, geniality of deradauour and generosity of nature, die has tastes in occupation and recreation which cannot fail !to win him a broad-based popularity. He is a keen sportsman, a. good shot, and was in his youth and middle age a. staunch patron of all manly games and exercises; and although it may he that his penchant for the turf has rather shocked the Puritan element, it is not to be denied, on the other hand, that a royal patron of the turf who “runs to win,” and who. exercises his influence in the direction of stamping out dishonesty and trickery in the conduct of a great national sport, is very much more a “persona grata” with the great majority of Englishmen than would be a prince whose personal tastes ignored the turf. The Prince that was, the King thatis; will not, it may be safely predicted, imitate the evil precedents set by his male predecessors on the Throne. Unlike George the Fourth and William the Fourth, be will not, we imagine, meddle in politics. For him there will be no political parties to sympathise with or to flout. Rather will he, if he choose*! as Heaven grant he may, to follow the example of his august mother, steadfastly hold himself aloof from aught save the necessary official connection with politics which is incumbent upon him as a monarch. In his personal relations with the various European sovereigns connected with him through marriage or by ties of blood,, be will,- we may feel assured, use such influence as he possesses to bring about a permanent international amity and mutual good will. The Great Rviley -of the Universe has entrusted him with a weighty but an honourable charge. May our King he a true King—a “Kenning man,” as Carlyle put it, one who, knows his duty and is able to perform it, to the honour of himself and to the glory and welfare of his nation. “God Save the King.”