If the collier reader of the Spectator mentioned by Mr.
Atkins replies by asking us whether we are aware that King Edward VII. interfered in foreign policy, we can only ray that ho did not do so on his own initiative, but, so to speak, as tho instrument or at the request of his Ministers. Further, his action, curiously enough, was in the . interests of the French Republic and gainst his own nephew and brother-monarch, the Kaiser. Again, Queen Victoria's best-known intervention in foreign affairs was on the democratic side. She without doubt saved us from war with America by insisting that the Government's despatch to the Ames ican. Government over " the Trent Affair " should be couched in polite and conciliatory language, and not conceived in the arrogant tone suggested by the Foreign Secre- tary. But even if the King had the power, which he has not, to modify the foreign policy of his Ministers, it is certain that the last person for whom the present King would use it is the German Emperor. In the first place, there is no greater delusion than that Kings gad Kings love each other, or that the bonds of relationship are very dear to them. We venture to say that there are no two people 'whose natural instincts, whose ways of looking at the world, and whose general sympathies arc so utterly opposed as those of the German Emperor and our own Sovereign.
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