It is the fashion for the apologists of monarchy in the British Empire to speak of the British system as a crowned republic.  That is an attractive phrase to people of republican sentiments.  It is quite conceivable that the British Empire may be able to make that phrase a reality and that the royal line may continue, a line of hereditary presidents, with some of the ancient trappings and something of the picturesque prestige that, as the oldest monarchy in Europe, it has to-day.  Two kings in Europe have already gone far towards realizing this conception of a life president; both the King of Italy and the King of Norway live as simply as if they were in the White House and are far more accessible.  Along that line the British monarchy must go if it is not to go altogether.  Will it go along those lines?

There are many reasons for hoping that it will do so.  The Times has styled the crown the “golden link” of the empire.  Australians and Canadians, it was argued, had little love for the motherland but the greatest devotion to the sovereign, and still truer was this of Indians, Egyptians, and the like.  It might be easy to press this theory of devotion too far, but there can be little doubt that the British Crown does at present stand as a symbol of unity over diversity such as no other crown, unless it be that of Austria-Hungary, can be said to do.  The British crown is not like other crowns; it may conceivably take a line of its own and emerge—­possibly a little more like a hat and a little less like a crown—­from trials that may destroy every other monarchial system in the world.

Now many things are going on behind the scenes, many little indications peep out upon the speculative watcher and vanish again; but there is very little that is definite to go upon at the present time to determine how far the monarchy will rise to the needs of this great occasion.  Certain acts and changes, the initiative to which would come most gracefully from royalty itself, could be done at this present time.  They may be done quite soon.  Upon the doing of them wait great masses of public opinion.  The first of these things is for the British monarchy to sever itself definitely from the German dynastic system, with which it is so fatally entangled by marriage and descent, and to make its intention of becoming henceforth more and more British in blood as well as spirit, unmistakably plain.  This idea has been put forth quite prominently in the Times.  The king has been asked to give his countenance to the sweeping away of all those restrictions first set up by George the Third, upon the marriage of the Royal Princes with British, French and American subjects.  The British Empire is very near the limit of its endurance of a kingly caste of Germans.  The choice of British royalty between its peoples and its cousins cannot be indefinitely delayed.  Were it made now publicly and boldly, there can be no doubt that the decision would mean a renascence of monarchy, a considerable outbreak of royalist enthusiasm in the Empire.  There are times when a king or queen must need be dramatic and must a little anticipate occasions.  It is not seemly to make concessions perforce; kings may not make obviously unwilling surrenders; it is the indecisive kings who lose their crowns.