THE YPRES TIMES
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Queen Victoria, nominally a constitutional monarch, was in truth the last of our
autocratsEdward VII, represented the transitional stage, forced by the rising tide
of democracy to relinquish some of the prerogatives which his predecessor had battled
desperately to maintainKing George was monarch of the new order. He succeeded,
as I have pointed out, in the midst of a political crisis which was none of his own making
one which all King Edward's tact and experience had been unable to avert.
His Majesty faced it, as he faced others that were to follow, with an entire absence
of panic. The warring parties found themselves in the presence of an umpire above
them all, whose good sense and impartiality of judgment was clearly manifest. In
Photo] [Imperial War Museum. Crown Copyright
HIS MAJESTY THE KING, H R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES, AND F.M. SIR
DOUGLAS HAIG AT BEAUQUESNE ON AUGUST 8th, 1916.
the first year of his reign King George, single-handed, established that respect for the
Crown which, based upon his rigid interpretation of his duties as a constitutional monarch,
was later to be loyally maintained in the Irish crisis of 1914.
Who can forget that fateful crisis Was ever a ruler of this country called upon
to employ such momentous words as those in which His Majesty summoned the Home
Rule conference at Buckingham Palace in the July of that year The cry of Civil
War," he declared, is on the lips of the most responsible and sober-minded of my
people." In those dark days, when argument had completely been exhausted and it
seemed that internecine strife was imminent, the King stepped into the breach and in
very truth became the Adviser of his Advisers." It is idle to speculate what would
