standing aloof from party polities in the domestic field, the Prince of Wales has only. imitated. the example set by his royal nother; but in the arena of fore affairs, too, where the'Crown still claims, and has its claim' allowed, to exert more direct and personal influence, the Heir to the Crown has: endeavoured to be equally neutral and equally passive, in spite of some very strong temptations to the contrary. 'Take, for example, the Danish War, which broke out about a yeat after the' Prince hud brought home to' this country his Danish bride. How tint Princess must have felt at the prospect of her father's kingdom being docked of its Elbe Duchies at the hands of the two chief German Powers was illustrated' bythe fast, that one morning she burst into natural tears when a foolish equerry read out a telegram announcing a success of the Austro-Prussian forces, which caused-her sympathetic husband, it was said, to lose-his temper for once, and rate tle tactless equerry ''as soundly as his ancestor, Henry VIII, might have done."
But sorrow in such circumstances for a distressed Princess was one thing, and practical sympathy with her over-matched countrymen' was quite another. Blustering "Old Pam" and the bulk of the nation—which the Queen herself might well have characterised "at this time, as she had dune on the eve of the Crimean War,.as. very loyal and a little mad "—were decidedly in favour of arms being taken up for Denmark; and it was mainly, if not entirely] owing to the superior wisdom and personal intervention of the Queen thatthe country was saved from the suicidal folly of a war with all Germany. This may,. this must have been very hurd for the Princess of Wales to bear; but there is nothing to show that her husband ever sought to exert an influence on the Danish question in a Sense opposite to that of his royal mother, much as he may have sympathised with the desire of his wife "to have Bismarck's head
id anything on this occasion to justify to her on a charger," or that he the saying of a Lord Granville (of the time of Chatham) as to some natural peculiarity in the House of Brunswick: This fa always has quarrelled and always will quarrel from generation to generation."
As one more instance out of many of the neutrality of the Prince of Wales in foreign question take the late Greco-Turkish War with all its momentous issues for the royal family at Athens, The heart of no one could have beaten tore warriily for the King of Greece in all his direful troubles than that of his sister, the Princess of Wales; and yet there is no reason to believe that any nal effort was made from Marlborough House to influence the Exstera policy of Lord Salisbary, antipathetic as it seemed to the aspirations, or at least the actions, of the Greeks. Our constitutional rulers, and our prospective tulers, have in fact come to realise that their dynastic ties must, be subordinated to the doctrines of international utility and treaty law—an infinite gain to the cause of public good.
But witness also how the Princess of Wales lietself has been guided by the splendid impartiality of her royal husband, as evinced among other things, by the request made to her in 1881 to give her aid to Lady Bective's scheme for encouraging the British woollen industry. Her Royal Highness expressed her personal sympathy, but was obliged to say that, as, such w scheme must benefit long-haired wool to the detriment of other kinds," she could not take such prominent part ina contest between different classes of the population."
Tt was the same just spirit of impartiality—to quote but one typical instance. out of many—which porce the Prince of Wales himself when, in answer to a request that he might intervene in some way to bring to a close the great struggle between masters and men in the dnginee'cwg trade (in the Autumn of 1897), ne replied that, while deeply deploring the disastrous state of affairs in the afores aid industry, he felt that it would not be n ght or proper of him to attempt in anyway to interfere or mix'himself up in them."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.