Which King ?
SIR,—Miss Laski knows far more about King Alfred than I do. How- ever it was character, not intellectual achievement, which I had in mind, and where I think true greatness is to be found. No one would wish to claim that George VI was a scholar comparable to Alfred.
By " the rhythm of his personality "—not a very good phrase, I fear— I meant the conscious and progressive devotion of his whole life to those duties, which he had more and more to perform, as a religious trust to which he had been called. Allowing for the immense differ- ences of time, circumstances and bodily capacities, it seemed to me that the essential man of both characters had much in common; sincerity, humility, the capacity to go on fighting against great odds, and that power of learning spiritual lessons from the practical experiences of life as it unfolds, which I had (perhaps too rashly) in my mind con- sidered an Anglo-Saxon trait rather than a Norman one.—Yours
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