The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, MAY 12, 1910. A NATION’S GRIEF

New Zealand Tablet, 12 May 1910, Page 741

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, MAY 12, 1910. A NATION’S GRIEF

HERE is nothing to soften or mitigate the blow is nothing to soften or mitigate the blow •ill mJy that has fallen upon the nation in the wholly unanticipated death of our beloved King. It g.' unanticipated death our beloved health It W is true that for some weeks past his health had v , _ JiL been unsatisfactory, but no onenot even the 4\% physicians nor the Royal Family circlefor a » moment suspected that there was any serious IP ; or immediate danger. We can only fall back on the old commonplacestrite, but eternally trueabout the certainty and inexorableness of death. The glories of our birth and state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armor against fate: Death lays his icy hand on kings; Sceptre and crown , Must tumble down,. And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade. ‘ The old, old fashion The fashion that came in with our first garments, and will last unchanged till our race has run its course, and the wide firmament is rolled up like a scroll. The old, old fashion—! Oh, thank God, all who see it, for that older fashion yet—of Immortality I’ » The feeling of regret and sorrow which spread over the Dominion when the news of the King’s death was received was deep, genuine, and universal. Rarely has a monarch so won his way into the hearts of his people. Not only had a great figure—a figure which filled the imaginationbeen removed from the world’s stage, but his subjects everywhere felt that they had lost a personal friend. In these days of * triumphant Democracy ’ it is only to be expected that there should be numbers of people who have no love for Royalties as such, and who believe that as a nation progresses representative institutions should do ever more and more and monarchy ever less and less in the work of government; but there was something so kindly, genial, and human in the personality of Edward VII. that most uncompromising Radical could appreciate it. We can say little of the King’s personal relations to his friends, for at this distance practically all we get to know of him is in relation to the discharge of his official duties, but even in these he not only displayed tact and dignity, but he showed also that touch of personal sympathy which wins the hearts of men, and which, like mercy, ‘becomes the throned monarch better than his crown.’ This quality of kindly human feeling on the part of the King cropped out even in the discharge of duties that were irksome and disagreeable to him. Thus on the occasion of his accession, when making the infamous Declaration which brands as idolaters so many millions of his Catholic subjects, it was noted that when he came to the hateful words he hurried over them with the greatest possible haste, and said them in so low a tone that they were practically inaudible—showing his personal sympathy with Catholic feeling in the

matter and his personal distaste for the duty which Parliament had stupidly and perversely thrust upon him.

Nor was this by any means the only occasion on which he manifested sympathy and consideration for his Catholic subjects. Throughout his whole career, both as Prince of Wales and as King, he , always showed the utmost regard and respect for Catholic faith, Catholic practices, and Catholic ecclesiastics. In his earlier life Manning was his intimate friend, as was" Father Bernard Vaughan in his later days. Away back in the sixties, in the most uncompromising manner, he publicly declineddespite urgent pressureto allow himself to be either trapped or cajoled or bullied at Kingston (Canada) into association with or countenance of the dark-lantern fanatics of the Orange lodge. When the occasion seemed to call for it, he did not hesitate to assist at Massto the undisguised chagrin of ultra-Protestant zealots. Only the other day he visited Lourdes, and the cables specially mentioned his conspicuously reverent attitude towards the manifestations of Catholic faith and devotion of which he was an interested witness. His warm admiration for Gladstone, and his personal approval of the great statesman’s Home Rule policy are well known. He was the first English Sovereign since the Reformation who ' personally visited and greeted our Holy Father the Pope; and ho was the first head of the British Empire who ever visited that centre of Irish Catholic life—Maynooth College. The occasion was made memorable by a striking display of that quick sympathy and delicacy of feeling for which the late monarch was so remarkable. The visit to Maynooth took place at the very time that the late Pope Leo XIII. lay dead in St. Peter’s—a day, therefore, of gloom and sorrow for the Irish people. With that courtesy , and tact which so distinguished him, his Majesty sought to manifest unmistakably his respect for the creed which has supported Ireland through many a struggle by ordaining that his suite should invest themselves in mourning apparel for the occasion, and that part of the Royal State in which he usually travelled should be dispensed with. Her Majesty the Queen also, in kindly consideration for the grief of the Irish people at the loss of their beloved Pope, was attired in black. In reply to the welcome accorded to him by the hierarchy, after paying tribute to the renown of Maynooth as the Alma Mater of ‘so many devoted men,’ his Majesty testified his gratification at the true appreciation which not alone the hierarchy, but the Irish race in general, entertained of his feeling towards them. He uttered words of thanks for the services which had been rendered to his Empire by many sons of the Irish soil, and declared the high esteem in which he held the ‘ admirable gifts of mind and heart ’ of which he considered his Irish subjects were possessed. To such multiplied instances and expressions of kindness and affection for the Irish people the great heart of the Celt could not fail to respond with feelings of ardent gratitude and devotion. » The great achievements and splendid promise of Edward \ 11. s career as a Kingall too short as it has been—deserve all the eulogies winch they- have received at the hands of our secular contemporaries. It is true that under the present regime of constitutional monarchy the King no longer possesses such powers of producing rapidly tremendous results for good or evil as attached to the Sovereign in the old days, when the monarch was absolute and supreme. Still, there are a great variety of matters, none of which in themselves are perhaps of very great significance, on which it is very important that the King should steadily and consistently arrive at sound judgments; and in the multitude of these small but not unimportant routine duties of kingship, throughout his nine years’ reign, Edward VII. made no false step. In the larger sphere of kingly activity he exhibited qualities of statesmanship which easily place him in the forefront as beyond all question the greatest ruler of his day. By the magnetism of his personality he has restored the charm of Monarchy in a way which the statesmen of seventy years agowho thought the British Crown was slipping to the ground— have deemed impossible. His visits to foreign potentates were invariably followed by a kindlier feeling and better understanding between the nations; and his unique gift of conciliation was not only a great national

asset, but was recognised also as one of the dominant factors in promoting and maintaining universal peace. At the termination of the South African war Home newspapers were agreed that the result was due to the fact that the King had used his personal influence to secure peace, and they predicted that he would be known in history as 1 The Peacemaker. It is an honorable and glorious title, and the King that earns it—as Edward VII. has earned it — deserved well of the world.

Our new King and Queen, who are called on to take up the burden of government at such a critical period of the Empiie s history, are as yet little past the portals of their public life. They have to make their own mark in their own way. In one respect they have an advantage over our late beloved monarch, in that their visit to the overseas dominions has given them a personal insight into the circumstances and conditions of life of the most distant parts of the Empire, and has furnished them also with what ought to be a convincing object-lesson in the benefits which selfgovernment has conferred upon these young and flourishing southern lands. All the traditions surrounding them are in their favor. We can only pray, ‘ God save the King,’ and grant that he may be large-hearted, broad-minded, tolerant, and just, following faithfully in the footsteps of the honored dead.