tion of the future of monarchy is not whether it
will be able to resist and overcome that trend; it has as little chance
of doing that as the Lama of Thibet has of becoming Emperor of the
Earth. It is whether it will resist openly, become the centre and symbol
of a reactionary resistance, and have to be abolished and swept away
altogether everywhere, as the Romanoffs have already been swept away in
Russia, or whether it will be able in this country and that to adapt
itself to the necessities of the great age that dawns upon mankind, to
take a generous and helpful attitude towards its own modification, and
so survive, for a time at any rate, in that larger air.

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