If you attempt to penetrate into what may strike you as a mystery, you will be told that the cause as far as King George is concerned, is twofold: first, his high-minded, even slavish, devotion to his conception of his constitutional limitations, and, secondly, his equally incorrigible shyness. Sarah Bernhardt, when King George and Queen Mary were in Paris a couple of years ago, was once summoned to the royal box of the Comédie Franchise for presentation to the British sovereigns. She explained to friends afterward that the King’s modesty positively unnerved her. He was as bashful as a schoolgirl. I have been told that his manner in the presence even of his Ministers is almost deferential. He does not know the meaning of "mixing," an art in which his late father excelled. "The King and Queen are fond of lunching alone, and usually take their tea together," I read the other day in a "well-informed" society paper. Edward VII was fond of lunching with men of affairs. He did not heed the hoots of the aristocratic set, which was scandalized by his intimacy with tea-merchants and money kings, because through them he was accustomed to keep in touch with the human currents of his people’s life and times. Edward would hardly have allowed even the Empire’s greatest soldier (Englishmen explain) to call the new army "Kitchener’s Army." It would have been called the "King’s Army" and the King would have thrown his incalculably great moral influence into the breach in some more practical way than lending his photograph for recruiting advertisements. George V could have been England’s finest recruiting sergeant. He preferred to remain a constitutional monarch. [Illustration: King George V.] Englishmen excuse, rather than blame, the King. They point out, in his extenuation, that George’s is a gentle, self-effacing nature little fitted for the soul-stirring era in the midst of which Fate decreed that his reign should fall. They cast no aspersions on his rugged patriotism or even on his kingly zeal. They believe that, according to his lights, he exercises faithfully what he considers to be his prerogatives. They feel, they tell you, that it is not his fault that he remains the only man in the Kingdom who still wears a Prince Albert coat. His is, somehow, not the magnetic influence which, if it were that of Edward VII, would still be condemning Englishmen to cling to that ancient robe. They explain that it is his psychic misfortune, rather than a failing, that nobody thinks it worth while to emulate him by taking the pledge "for the duration of the war" and drinking barley-water. Edward VII’s abstemious decree would have blotted the liquor trade out of existence, because in the lap of his example sat militant loyalty. The "old King’s" wish was law.