The interest in royal doings is all the more baffling because the Queen is generally held to be powerless politically. This view is accepted in Britain and also in the United States, save among those surviving primitives of Chicagoland who regard all British monarchs as reincarnations of George III ready to order the Lobsterbacks to Boston at an insult's notice. The accepted picture is of a monarch who is a symbol with little or no influence on politics. Superficially the picture is accurate. But in the last century and in this there have been occasions when the Crown exerted power beyond the functions assigned it by the constitution. These functions include the summoning, proroguing, and dissolution of Parliament, the dismissal or appointment of a Prime Minister, the granting of pardons, and the conferring of peerages and honors. To become the law of the land, a bill passed by Parliament must receive the royal assent. All very impressive. But in practice these functions are restricted by the principle that the monarch is responsible to the government of the day even though it is styled "Her Majesty's Government." To take one example, if the Queen wants to make Lord Tomnoddy a duke and the Prime Minister says no, Lord Tomnoddy does not become a duke. The monarch retains the right of conferring certain honors, such as the Order of the Garter, without ministerial advice. But when Chancellor Adenauer of Germany receives the insignia of the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George the inspiration comes not from Buckingham Palace but from Downing Street. The principle of responsibility to the government guides the conduct of the monarch. In rare cases the sovereign can express disapproval of a policy. In the present circumstances the idea of the young Queen rejecting the advice of her Prime Minister is unthinkable. Without being romantic, we can wonder if this will always be so. George V twice exercised his discretionary powers in choosing from among alternative candidates the man he regarded as best suited to be Prime Minister. Of course, in each case the candidate chosen had to have the support of his party in the House of Commons. We need not go back that far. George VI, the father of the present Queen, once made a decision that profoundly affected the history of the world. When in May 1940 a tired, unpopular Neville Chamberlain resigned as Prime Minister there were two candidates for the post: Winston Churchill and Lord Halifax. The King knew that a large section of the Conservative Party distrusted Churchill and admired Halifax. Its views were conveyed to him in plain language.