The Daily News. TUESDAY, JANUARY 12, 1915. KING EDWARD'S POLICY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 183, 12 January 1915, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, JANUARY 12, 1915. KING EDWARD'S POLICY.

r lo tin- insight and personality of King Edward \ 01must bo accorded the credit lor the remarkable rapprochement which lias resulted in tlie Great Alliance now lighting a common battle for tlie liberties of Europe (writes the Auckland Herald). The harmonious relations between Britain, trance and Russia, with the cordial .sympathy of Italy, and the readiness of Portugal, are due to great political causes which no statesman could create and 110 monarch imitate. These causes were at work long before Jiritain and France drew togetner and found that they had 110 real antagonisms, but many common interests. King Edward did not transform an unfriendly France into a trusty ally, or an inimical Italy into a remarkably good friend, but had the ability to perceive and the influence to a practical and sound internation- i al policy in place of the antiquated and meaningless prejudices which dominated the Governments of the present Alliance, when he ascended the British throne. British foreign policy has always been conservative, slow to take form and shape, slow to change. Had King Edward never lived, Britain and France I would probably have come to an understanding, sooner or later; it would certainly have been later, probably too late. For nations do not suddenly forget their old habits of thought, nor do embassies pass in a night from ingrained distrust to whole-hearted confidence. We have had a dozen years in which to become accustomed to the truth tliat I'ritish and French, once natural enemies, are now natural friends, that our international purposes are not antagonistic but identical, and that ou! friends' friends are our friends, whereever they are. The attempt of Germany to tyrannise over Europe, to plunder civilisation, to win what she emphatically termed "a place in the sun," by which was meant, among other tilings, the seizure and occupation of this very Xew Zealand of ours, has been the cement of the union, but the union has been made by the ftfet that we realise completely how neither wishes to injure the other. This fact was undiscovered by tile British public, was ignored by British statemen, when King IjMward VJl.—that unassuming monarch a!ml kindly gentleman—made his epochmaking tour of Portugal, Italy and France. He had the supreme advantage' of having lived for nearly sixty years within the inner' circles of international diplomacy, under the jealous watchfulness with which constitutional monarchy regards heirs-apparent. Least of any men in tlie world must British heirs-apparent meddle with politics, and Edward was ever loyal to the spirit as to tlie letter of this good custom. As a 11—nit, lie ciime to the throne extraordinarily well informed upon the European situation, and entirely unbound and uninfluenced by bureaucfatlG preconceptions. France and Germany, with their aims and purposes, were open books to him; Italy had no secrets from him; Russia was far from strange, lu a month, this simple king of ours whose only claim was that lie would try and do his duty to us, snapped like threads the pretentious diplomacies of the egotistical Kaiser. He laid the foundation of the fighting alliance of to-day, laid it surely, because hj« based it on facts, and brought together nations that had every reason to be loyal friends and allies.