EDWARD, THE PEACEMAKER

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 293, 7 June 1912, Page 5

EDWARD, THE PEACEMAKER

A PRANK. BIOGRAPHY. By Cable—Pregs Association—-Copyright. Received 6, 8.25 p.m. London, June 6. The outstanding feature of the new volume of the Dictionary of National Biography is Sydney Lee's candid memoir of King Edward, largely based on previously unpublished and unwritten sources. He says that Queen Victoria's obstinate refusal to grant him genuine political responsibility or a settled solid occupation somewhat affected his moral robustness, white the gloom of his mother's Court helped to evoke a feaction against the conventional strictness of his upbringing. Among the proposals for employment that Queen Victoria vetoed was Mr. Gladstone's suggestion, in 1873, that the Prince should join the India Council Cabinet. The key giving access to foreign despatches was not granted to him until 1895. At his accession lie was a stranger to the administrative details of a great office, when too old to repair the neglect of his political training. Though at the outset there were slight indications that he overestimated the sovereign power, this was due to inexperience, and later, in home politics, he was, for the most part, content with the role of an onlooker, viewing detashedly the programmes of all parties. He earnestly desired a peaceful solution of the Lords and Commons conflict, but passively acquiesced in Mr. Asquith's plans. King Edward found no comfort in the action of any of the parties to the strife, but to the last privately cherished the conviction that peace would be reached without the creation of Peers. Though there were short seasons of variance between him and the Kaiser, he could not be charged with deliberate or systematic hostility towards the German people. His personal feeling was very superficially affected by the mutual jealousy which grew up during his reign between Britain and Germany. He was a peacemaker, not through the exercise of any diplomatic initiative or ingenuity, but by faith in the blessings of peace. By the influence passively attaching to his high station and temperament, his personality greatly strengthened the hold of Royalty on public affection. Probably no king ever won so affectionately the goodwill at once of foreign peoples and his own subjects. A man of the world, he was backed by his intellectual equipment as a thinker, yet he was always ■eager for information, and gathered orally very varied stores of knowledge.