The procession moved slowly on to the famous Abbey, the Emperor riding a grey horse, saluting at intervals as he rode along.  On arrival at the Abbey an incident occurred.  As soon as Queen Alexandra’s carriage arrived and drew up, the Emperor, according to the accounts of eyewitnesses, ran to the door of the carriage with so much alacrity that he had reached it before the royal servants, and when it appeared that her Majesty was not to alight from that side of the carriage, the Emperor motioned the lacqueys round to the other door, and was there before them to assist her Majesty.  This he did, after himself opening the door.  The Emperor remained in England only a very few days after the funeral, seeing old friends, among them Lord Kitchener.

As of interest to both Englishmen and Germans may be mentioned the tour through India undertaken by the Crown Prince in November.  Steele once happily said of a Lady Hastings that “to love her was a liberal education”; to make a tour through India, it might similarly be said, is an education in the extent and character of British imperial power and administration.  The Crown Prince naturally devoted a goodly share of his time to the delights of sport, including tiger-shooting and pig-sticking, but he must also have learned much of England’s fine imperial spirit from his intercourse with an official hierarchy as honest and conscientious as that of his own country.  The Crown Prince, on his return home, published a volume of hunting reminiscences which does no small credit to him as an author.

The Emperor’s “shining armour” political remark dates from this period.  He was on a visit to his Triplice ally, Kaiser Franz Josef, in September, 1910, and made a speech at the Vienna Town Hall on the 21st which contained a reference to the loyal conduct he claimed Germany had observed when the action of Austria-Hungary in annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite the wording of the Treaty of Berlin, had raised an outcry in other countries, and in particular strained Austrian relations with Russia.  After thanking his audience for the personal reception given him, he continued: 

“On the other hand, it seems to me I read in your resolution the agreement of the city of Vienna with the action of an ally in taking his stand in shining armour at a grave moment by the side of your most gracious sovereign.”

The outcry caused in the world by Austria’s high-handed annexation, and especially in Russia, theoretically always Austria’s most probable enemy, owing to conflicting interests in the Balkans, subsided, we know, as suddenly as it was raised.  The reason, it is currently believed, and the form in which the rays of the shining armour acted, was an intimation from the Emperor to the Czar that, if necessary, Germany was prepared to fight for Austria.