The Queen may have opinions on national and international affairs which differ from those of her ministers. To date there has been no reliable report of such differences. But her grandfather, George V, was seldom backward in expressing opinions contrary to those of his ministers. He told them, for instance, that the conduct of the 1914-18 war must be left to military "experts," which meant Haig and his staff, rather than to politicians. He opposed the dissolution of Parliament in 1918. He refused outright to grant a convenient "political" peerage. This opposition, it should be emphasized, was not directed at court functionaries. On many occasions George V took issue with David Lloyd George, a wartime Premier then at the height of his prestige and power, and a brilliant and tenacious debater.
The present royal family invites comparisons with that of a century ago. Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, is, like Albert, the Prince Consort of Victoria, an exceptional person. He is a man of industry and intelligence. Like Albert, he understands both the broad outlines and the nuances of a new industrial age into which Britain is moving. He has a wider acquaintance with the world of science, so essential to his country, than any other member of the royal family. The techniques of industry and invention really interest him. He understands, perhaps better than some of his wife's ministers, the importance to Britain of such developments as the industrial use of nuclear energy. Finally, the Duke of Edinburgh has one matchless qualification for his role. As a young officer of the Royal Navy he became aware of the way the Queen's subjects, as represented by the lower deck of the Navy, think and feel. He has in fact what the admirers of the Duke of Windsor claimed for him when he was Prince of Wales: an intimate knowledge of the people of Britain.
These qualities are not universally admired. A trade-union leader told me he did not want "well-intentioned young men like Philip mucking about with industrial relations." At the other side of the political spectrum, the Sunday Express, Lord Beaverbrook's newspaper, tut-tutted at the Duke's interest in this field.
The reasoning behind both attitudes is obvious. Industrial relations are politics. The union movement is the Fourth Estate of the realm, and "royals" should leave them alone.
There is an obvious parallel. The Prince Consort when he died had established himself at the center of national affairs. But for his death, Lytton Strachey wrote, "such a man, grown gray in the service of the nation, virtuous, intelligent, and with the unexampled experience of a whole lifetime of government," would have achieved "an extraordinary prestige."
Disraeli saw the situation in even more positive terms. "With Prince Albert we have buried our sovereign. This German Prince has governed England for twenty-one years with a wisdom and energy such as none of our kings have ever shown.... If he had outlived some of our 'old stagers' he would have given us the blessings of absolute government."
The parallel may seem far-fetched. Of course present-day Britain is not the Britain of 1856. It is hard to think of Sir Anthony Eden or Hugh Gaitskell being moved politically, at the moment, by the views of the Queen or the Duke of Edinburgh as Lord Clarendon was, and as Lord Palmerston was not, by Victoria and Albert. But, to borrow Napoleon III's incisive phrase, in politics one should never say never.
Not long ago a diplomat who had returned from a key post abroad encountered the Queen at what should have been a perfunctory ceremony. He expected a few minutes' conversation. What he got was forty minutes of acute questioning about the situation in the country he had just left. The Queen impressed him with the width of her knowledge, her accurate memory, and the sharpness of her questions. He, a tough, skeptical intellectual, departed with heightened respect for his sovereign's intelligence.
What will be the Queen's influence a quarter of a century hence? By then some politician, now unknown, will be Prime Minister. How much will the wisdom and experience of the Queen, gained as the repository of the secrets of successive governments, affect the government of the day? Monarchy, we Americans are taught, is an archaic symbol and an obsolete form of government. History has moved away from constitutional monarchies and, of course, from one-man rule. But has it? Will the movement continue?
By 1980 the British monarchy may be a memory. But let us suppose that by that year the royal house is represented by an infinitely experienced Queen and a consort who knows the country's problems as well as most of her ministers. Prince Philip is a nephew of Earl Mountbatten, one of the most striking Englishmen of today. What will this infusion of determination, energy, and intelligence do for the fortunes of the monarchy?