THE KINGSHIP OF GEORGE V
By R. H. GRETTON WHEN King George came to the throne, pi.Obably the last thing that was expected of him was that he should give' a new meaning to kingship. Queen Victoria and King Edward seemed to have done all that was needed' to find for the Crown its function in modern Parliamentary government, and for the throne its place in -a modern world. -All that was known of King George, by the mass of his people at any rate, promised, indeed, that in neither respect was kingship likely to lose its ground ; but it was even less likely to take on a new significance and a new character. . • If kingship is to have any meaning in the modern World it must be as the embodiment of that abiding sense of unity, of continuous. entity, in a nation, under- lying all differences of mind and habit and ways of life. Just as the individual has his 'sense of personality, which is never wholly expressed in what he - does or thinks— may, indeed, even at times be quite misrepresented by what he does—so a nation has its sense of a unity underlying. all its conflict and divided effort, some abiding sameness which is not its culture or its politics or its way of life. That is surely what our kingship. expresses for Us ; and it has been the . genius of our last three sovereigns to see that kingship could still have meaning in a world which was- beginning to think it had none, and to make it no vague symbol, but 'a vital conception, most vital in that it has had power to-change with Vastly changing conditions. Each Sovereign's conception of kingship has in an astonishing degree met the spirit of the time.
What Queen Victoria did, with the aid of the Prince Consort, was to make of the Crown, in days when the relation of Ministers to the country at large was -uneasily changing, one stable power that had to be consulted without platform effects, and had to be satisfied. This was most important ; for, great as the changes of 1832 might be, politics remained on the whole the business of comparatively few people born to public affairs, who at the same time were handling and remaking the national life ' in ways that had not before been dreamt of.
Moreover, they were doing it with dangerously new forces, for a majority of the House was no longer a mere combination of personal supporters, but could he spoken of as embodying " the will of the people "- and still is—though it is in fact only the will of the more numerous part of them. It was well that into the play of party the Queen, consciously or not, could introduce an embodiment of the people which had always to be borne in mind besides the people as an t•lectorate. This is one aspect at least of the Palmerston incident in 1851. The Queen was not merely clinging to a prerogative ; she was reminding Ministers that besides parties, in the House or outside it, there is the country as a whole, which had as a whole no existence save in her. The last word could not be said without the concurrence -of the one embodiment of the nation. which was outside the play of politics.
This, far more than the commonplace that she restored to the Crown dignity and respect, was the contribution of Queen Victoria to the -task of -giving meaning to king- ship in a modern State. How real it was is clearly shown by the curious .state of the public mind at King Edward's accession. Little as the average citizen knew of the continuous watchfulness and activity that the publication of the Queen's letters has since shown us, he wcs aware that she had always had to be reckoned with, and that there was politics more than his voice at the polls. Marty, of course, hOped that there would now be an end of this. But that was riot the feeling of the 'mass of the people.- There was, on the contrary, the strongest expectation that King Edward, in far more ways than those of pomp and pageantry, would bring the Crown into the life of the nation. It was not the exercise of a certain power in politics, but the obscurity of it, as of all the Queen's later life, which the people in the mass wanted to see at an end.
This movement of the popular mind was strong enough to alarm a good many persons, who feared that the King might display an activity difficult to reconcile with the Constitution. He was too wise for that ; and we knoW now that even the activity which was attribUted to him, especially in foreign affairs, has been much exaggerated. Yet the fact remains that amid the very disturbed politics of his reign—the rupture of the Tory Party on Tariff Reform, the violent swing of the pendulum in 1906, above all, the gathering storm in Ireland—the British public did look to King Edward as a power above the battle which would somehow see them through. One has only to remember the sense of really tragic loss when his death came at the moment of crisis in Irish affairs.
But his true contribution to the idea of kingship was in the. width he, gave to it. That was why his people quite frankly hoped that he would be a power in politics. There Would he nothing narrowly political about any action of his. A King interested in little but public affairs, and withdrawn froth the common life of his people, might easily have destroyed the Crown's influence. But King Edward touched the national life at so many points ; he seemed to like and share his people's ways, and if he were to intervene in matters of State it would be not as a politician but as one who spoke in their own voice and their own manner, yet with a singleness of authority they could never, in the nature of things, achieve themselves.
It might have seemed that this was a conception of kingship which needed no more to find its place in a modern State. It was left, however, for King George to take it further yet. Queen Victoria and King Edward both had a strong natural taste for politics and public affairs ; King George not only had no such taste, but spent all his early years in the Service which traditionally cherishes a remoteness from them. Therefore, whereas in the case of the two former sovereigns it was their concern for public affairs which set them to find the part that kingship could play in embodying the nation as a whole, with King George it is his embodiment of the people that has made him find his part in public affairs.
They were great figures in public affairs who made contact with their people ; he was the great figure of his people who made contact with public affairs, and so gave the really demOciatic touch to the meaning of kingship. The difference can be put in a few words if we look at them through foreign eyes. What other nations knew of Queen Victoria was the exalted and rather legendary figure playing a part that, if mysterious, was felt to be very strong in the destinies of her people. What they knew of King Edward was the accomplished, dignified, great man of the. world, such as they could recognise at a glanCe. What they have known of King George is what his people have made them see in him.
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