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. There has never been any false rhetoric, any tawdry metaphors, or anything, indeed, which was not in perfect keeping with the characteristics of an English gentleman. We are not going to labour our point by detailed comparisons with the leader of the nation’s enemies; but when we read the Kaiser’s Imperial messages and manifestoes we cannot help thanking Heaven that to the bitterness of war is not added for us the bitterness of having to blush repeatedly for our Sovereign’s taste.
Comments