It is announced that the Grand Duke Franz Ferdinand ,feels
himself unable to come to the Coronation as his -morganatic marriage prevents his wife also being asked. All Englishmen will greatly regret that we are not to welcome the heir-presumptive to the throne of Austria-Hungary. In Great Britain we know nothing of morganatic marriages. In our law, whether for kings or peasants, there is only one form of marriage. We should certainly have no sympathy as a nation with the anomalous arrangement which confers a bare legitimacy without rights of name or succession.
We have no doubt that the readiness of the British people to welcome the wife of the Grand Duke is fully shared by our Royal Family, but, unhappily, we cannot thrust the British view on foreign Courts. To act upon it in issuing invitations might perhaps be held to cause gratuitous embarrassment abroad. Nevertheless, we are sorry to lose an opportunity of proving to the future ruler of Austria-Hungary the warm and ancient regard we entertain towards his country, and also, as we have said, the fact that for the British people the Grand Duke's wife has no lower status than the Consort of any other Heir-Apparent.
