cial deputations, visits to cities and towns and the
private houses of his greater subjects, State dinners to men and women
of every school of thought and life in its higher branches, frequent
trips to the Continent and continuous conferences with public men. In
this connection it is interesting to note that just before the General
Elections--towards the close of 1909--he did what no Sovereign had done
for many a long year and did it not only without criticism but with
public approval when he called Lord Lansdowne, Lord Rosebery and Mr.
Balfour into quiet conference regarding the political situation. How
many others of all parties he may have invited to similar discussions in
the privacy of Buckingham or Windsor only such a personage as his
faithful and old-time Secretary, Lord Knollys, really knows. Military
and Naval reviews were amongst the more important general functions of
these years coupled with gracious and conciliatory visits to Ireland in
1904 and 1907. In this latter year he reviewed a magnificent fleet of
warships at Portsmouth eleven miles long, headed by the first of the
Dreadnaughts, and manned by 35,000 officers and men. Upon another
occasion in 1909, the greatest fleet ever gathered together in any
waters in the history of the world was also reviewed by His Majesty as,
perhaps, a comment on the recently revealed crisis caused by German
Naval construction. As to this the King was intensely concerned and we
can safely assume that if one cause of his latter ill-health was
political worry another cause may well have been the Naval rivalry of a
Power which boasted 4,000,000 of a trained Army to Britain's 250,000
men.

With all these varied home duties and his many diplomatic efforts King
Edward never forgot his own external Empire, never overlooked his vast
interests overseas. To India in 1908 had gone a vivid and statesmanlike
Royal Message, on November 2d, which recalled to the minds of its
Princes and peoples their fifty years of progress under the Crown, the
obligations which they were under to the liberty-loving rule of Britain,
and the pride of their Emperor in governing so vast a congeries of races
and interests. To them also in 1906 he had sent the Prince and Princess
of Wales in a tour which repeated his own triumphs of 1876. To South
Africa, upon frequent and appropriate occasions, came expressions of the
King's interest in the people's welfare, in their strivings for unity,
in their efforts to re