NEWS OF THE WEEK
THE climax of the drama of the Throne was reached after the last issue of The Spectator went to Press, but nothing of such comment as we based on the material then available needs to be modified or withdrawn. The swiftness and smoothness of the transition from King Edward to King George is still hard to appreciate to the full. On 'Friday morning King Edward was sovereign ; by Monday the nation had settled down with complete calm and confidence to the beginning of what all pray will be the long and prosperous reign of a new King George, whose guiding principle, as he has already shown by several significant decisions, will be the traditions his father set. Acceptance of King George VI is universal, unhesitating and unqualified; papers and persons who aimed at another solution of the crisis have united with those who had concluded with reluctant conviction that this was the only way to keep the unity of the nation in the new reign unbroken. The crisis has taught us many things, and taught the world at the same time what a democracy in its best moments can be. Incidentally it has shown how limited the real influence of the .popular Press in great matters is. Of the four large-circulation daily papers in London three pressed insistently for the morganatic Marriage, but the instinctive soundness of judgement of the people was completely unaffected. It is just to add that it was fortified by a series of admir- able leading articles in the Daily Herald, which from the first saw the issues clearly and gripped them firmly.
* *
