Ich Dien
Speeches by H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, 1912-1916. (Hodder and Stoughton. 218.)
THE Prince of Wales is the most popular young man in the world, and there should be a world-wide audience for these speeches, originally delivered in far scattered parts of the earth, but now happily collected within the covers of a single handsome volume. The book is welcome for two reasons. It has intrinsic value for its observations upon those social, industrial, and international problems which the Prince, with his wide range of experience and his quick, intuitive sym- pathy, has had unique opportunities of studying. And, secondly, it throws an interesting light upon the development of the Prince's own personality. His Royal Highness, it is true, is singularly diffident in talking about himself, though some illuminating anecdotes and memories find their way incidentally into his speeches. But character is revealed by what is left unsaid as much as by what is said, and the Prince's modesty shines out of these pages as one of his most endearing traits.
The prevailing note is struck from the first. At Carnarvon, in 1911, the Prince said ". I am very young, but I have great examples before me." His second speech was delivered at St. Anselm's Church, South London, in 1914, when he confessed that " at present I cannot pretend to much know- ledge • • 6 but by studying the comfort and happiness of my tenants I hope to gain experience." How amply His Royal Highness has not only gained experience, but turned it to good account, his later utterances prove. There is a long silence during the War years when he was "mixing with men" upon the battlefields. But during those years, he said at the Guildhall in 1919, " I found my manheed." Since then, in the course of his incessant travels, the Prince has become the enthusiastic, yet eminently sane, champion of many good causes. The needs of the ex-Service men have, perhaps, been nearest of all to his heart. But his speeches show the multi., plicity of his interests and his remarkably firm grasp of affairs. Particularly insistent is his idea that the old conception of Empire is " obsolete," and that the British Empire should appear before us "as a single State, composed of many nations of different origins and different languages, which give their allegiance, not to the Mother Country, but to the great common system of life and government." Characteristic, again, is his sturdy disbelief in " flaming prospectuses," and his faith in " plain human co-operation." It is, indeed, the essentially " human " qualities of the Prince that make him the centre of affection and the power for good that he is: He has always set an admirable example of the fact that real dignity lies not in claiming service, but in giving it. " Ich Dien" is, for him, not merely a motto, but a habit.
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