They assert that the hour of Imperial peril, when national existence itself is at stake, has caused so many cherished shibboleths to go by the board, that the strait-jacket of "constitutional monarchy," which is another name for Irresponsibility, ought to go with them. In times of peace, say Englishmen, a conscientious figurehead on the throne is good enough. In times of war, they want a King. He need not be the blatant, ubiquitous limelight-chaser that the Kaiser is, but some of that royal dynamo’s attributes, diluted with English seasoning, would not have been unwelcome to his people during the past year and a half. Britons, though, I repeat, they do not cry it out for the multitude to hear, are not edified by the spectacle of a sovereign who has sojourned with his army and fleet only in the most formal manner, whose war-time activities are confined to peripatetic visits to hospitals and convalescent homes, to inspections and reviews, and to distribution of Victoria Crosses and Distinguished Service medals at Buckingham Palace. "The King," to whom Englishmen, before 10 P.M., still drink in reverential sincerity, and who rise in devout respect when they hear the anthem which beseeches Divine salvation for him, is an institution from which Britain felt it had a right to expect both lead and deed in a great war. She did not demand, or at least no conspicuous section of her has, that the King should take the field or the sea, and prance about in the saddle or on the quarter-deck, but they did hope, I think, for something more inspiring than nebulous constitutionalism. It was many months after thousands of other British mothers had sent their sons to death and glory that Queen Mary consented to the dispatch of the twenty-one-year-old Prince of Wales to the trenches. And Prince Albert, who is twenty, and was in the navy before the war, was never, as far as the public is informed, able to gratify his desire to return to active service afloat, but must cool his martial ardor in the inglorious capacity of an Admiralty messenger in London. Britons look across to Germany, Russia and Italy, even to Belgium and Serbia, and, contrasting the spectacle with "constitutionalism" in their own Royal household, acknowledge that theirs is not a thrilling picture.