THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 199, No. 5829

LONDON, FEBRUARY 9th, 1952

NEMEPENCE

FOUNDED IN 1 8 4 0

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

PROSPECTS OF CENTRAL AFRICAN FEDERATION

The Effect o f Varying Racial P o lic ie s . B y Peter Railing

ON PROTECTING A GOOD NAME

The B ill to Amend the Law o f Libel

A LETTER FROM SCOTLAND PIUS VII AND NAPOLEON

By Frank Macmillan

By Christopher Hollis

CATHOLICS AND LUTHERANS THE CHURCH AND THE MIND

By Rudolf Goethe

By F . C . Copleston, S .J .

POET OF POLAND A Study o f Adam M ick iew icz. B y Frank Savery

KING GEORGE VI T HE country is plunged in to real sorrow as well as public mourning fo r the sudden death o f His Majesty King George VI. I t was only sudden a t the end, for the country had long h ad warning o f the dangerous deterioration in his health. The successive severe operations which he had to undergo carried their message, even though it seemed a t one tim e th a t surgical skill had so far trium phed th a t, provided he lived carefully, he might continue fo r many more years.

Second World War, fought, happily, with a much lesser outpouring o f young blood, b rought nevertheless great sorrow in its train. K ing George and Queen E lizabeth were in the forefront in all th e good works which are hum anity’s response on these occasions ; works which we may legitimately pride ourselves upon undertaking spontaneously and thoroughly in this country.

The fifteen years o f his reign, filled as they always were with dram a tic and often with tragic events—years which saw war b rought to the people and homes o f this country, and the country itself in the direst peril—brought the Crown and its wearer and his family very close to the mass o f the people.

King George VI began his reign under singularly trying conditions, after the voluntary abdication o f an elder brother, between whom and his successor, in a way strikingly removed from the general pattern o f dynastic history, there was and remained a strong personal attachm ent. The circum stances o f the abdication were inevitably weakening for the prestige o f the Crown, whose essential role in the Constitution is to be outside, n o t merely politics, but the pressures o f public opinion. This had always been the justification o f the hereditary principle, th a t the King is secure, provided he observes the fundam ental laws o f th e Constitution ; 1936 disclosed and registered a change in the way public opinion regarded the Crown and the conduct required o f its wearer.

But if the war o f 1914-18 proved a great manifestation o f th e strength o f Imperial ties, it also gave, th ro ughout the world, a new stimulus to nationalism , which had indeed, in Central Europe, been one o f the causes o f th a t war. This ferment was working in the Dom in ions and Colonies, and, as the Empire became a Commonwealth, the Crown adjusted itself, and the extensive tours o f the Prince o f Wales expressed the new relationship.

W hat happened after the war o f 1939-45 was much more fundamental. I t was the? lo t o f K ing George VI to relinquish the title o f Emperor o f In d ia which his great-grandm other had assumed seventy years before, and to see most o f India declaring itself a Republic, but also rem aining in a special relationship with G reat Britain, and, in fact, with better personal relations th an had existed for a generation. T h a t something was saved was in great p a r t due to the character o f the late King, who had so much to do w ith Lord M ountbatten’s mission, and whose character made it impossible for Indians to nourish any fears th a t there were dynastic feelings here unfriendly to the great changes they had brought about.

In announcing his decision to reign as King George VI, the new K ing made it plain th a t he would seek to continue in the sound and approved paths o f his father. George V had taught his sons his own strict conceptions o f Constitutional Monarchy, as he had learnt them when he himself came to the th rone a t a tim e o f particular difficulty, when political passions were high, and it was a little uncertain how big a role the K ing might attem p t o r with how small a role he should content himself in working fo r agreement and the maintenance o f national unity.

A t the o ther extreme, with the Afrikaners o f the Union o f South Africa, the personal character o f the K ing and Queen, the success o f their extended visit, and their acceptance this year o f the hospitality o f the official country residence o f the Prim e Ministers o f the Union, all revealed the same broad and lofty conception o f the British Crown as above conflicting policies, as seeking to keep together people whom passion m ight tem p t to separate bu t whom reason, humanity and caution alike led to keep what bonds still hold them.

A fter four years there came for George V the war o f 1914, with its immense dem onstration o f -the reality o f the ties binding together the British Commonwealth, and a new and wider significance emerged fo r the Crown, which neither Queen Victoria nor Edward VII had known. This w ider significance has continued, so th a t a t the moment when she ascends the th ro ne the new Queen is in Africa, fresh from a Canadian visit and with a fu rther Commonwealth visit arranged.

Like K ing George V, the la te King, too, saw his country go to war before he had been long on the throne, and th e

The late King was adm irably suited to wear the Crown th rough these fifteen violent and transitional years, and he fo und his reward in th e widespread solicitude, the genuine feeling o f loyalty, deepening all th e tim e into affection, with which the country regarded the Royal House o f which he was the head.

To the three generations now so prematurely bereaved'— th e mother, the wife, and the daughters o f the King-—the respectful sympathy o f us all goes out, and with it the thought th a t , though he did n o t live to nearly the age o f his father or his grandfather, o r to the great age o f Queen V ictoria, he