The Spectator at war: Good taste and good breeding

From The King at the Front, The Spectator, 5 December 1914:

It is impossible for the ordinary Englishman not to be delighted with the good taste and good breeding as well as the sincerity with which the King has
acted throughout the war. Burke bade us so to be patriots as not to forget we are gentlemen. That, again, is an easy thing to say and not always an easy thing to do, for undoubtedly there are many men who in the excitement of a great crisis cannot help showing a vein of coarseness in their fibre which no one had perceived before. Great events bring out great and good qualities, or mean and bad qualities, according as they predominate in the individual. The King unquestionably has known how to be a patriot without forgetting that he is a gentleman, and has shown us “an exact example.” His speeches, his messages, and in fact all his public utterances, have been characterized by a perfection of manners which cannot but be applauded.