The Crown is not only a prosperous and wealthy establishment. It is also the center of a unique complex of commercial interests. The manufacture of souvenirs connected with the royal family is big business. These souvenirs range from hideous, cheap glass ash trays and "silver" spoons stamped with a picture of Buckingham Palace or of the Queen and the Duke to "coronation" wineglasses and dinner services sold to wealthy tourists. A whole section of British publishing is devoted to postcards, picture books, and other records of royal lives and royal occasions.
The Queen's world tour in 1953-4 produced a bumper crop of pictorial and prose reports to fit every purse and the prevailing taste for flowery adulation. These books were bought and read, or at least looked at, after the British public already had been exposed to newspaper accounts, magazine reports, radio bulletins, and television newsreels. Once at a dinner party the wife of a famous writer remarked: "I'm sick of this damned tour." The other guests broke into a flurry of conversation that had nothing to do with the royal voyage. Yet I learned that three of them felt "exactly as dear Betty does, but, my dear, you don't say it."
Some thoughtful students of the institution believe that the newspapers, magazines, radio, and television have forgotten Bagehot's injunction about letting too much light fall on the monarchy. But I have seen no diminution of popular interest. The highbrows may be bored, but the lowbrows and middlebrows love it.
The extensive coverage given the royal family has propaganda uses. In the years since the war there has been a quiet but intensive effort to reinforce the position of the monarch as the titular head of the Commonwealth. The rulers of Britain, Labor or Conservative, recognizing how slender are the ties that bind the Commonwealth, have worked steadily to strengthen the chief spiritual tie, the Crown, as political and economic ties have become attenuated.
The Queen is the Queen of Canada and Australia as well as of the United Kingdom. Canada, in fact, is a monarchy. Royal tours of Commonwealth countries emphasize the common tie of monarchy and are also intended to reawaken interest in Britain and, as these are a commercial people, British manufactures.
The reports that have reached London show that, from the standpoint of strengthening identity with the Commonwealth, the visit to Australia and New Zealand during the world tour was an outstanding success. To the exuberant, vigorous Australians, for instance, the Queen symbolized their relationship with the island many of them still call home. Criticism of the "pommies," the slang term for the British, was drowned in the swell of cheers for the Queen of Australia.
Nor should the effect of such tours on the younger members of the Commonwealth be underestimated. The visit to Nigeria in 1956 flattered its people and gave new meaning to the honors and titles that successive governments have bestowed on worthy—which in this context means loyal—natives of the country. Those in government who value the Commonwealth and Empire see such visits as a method of impressing new members of the Commonwealth with the permanence of a symbol that binds all members. Perhaps only South Africa, in its present government's mood of Boer republicanism, is proof against the loan of the Crown.
Curiously, this extension of the monarchy is not generally appreciated in Britain. There the supporters of the Crown are gratified, of course, when the newspapers report an ovation for the Queen in Wellington. But they are slow to accept the idea of the Queen as Queen of New Zealand.
The process of identifying the Queen with various parts of the Commonwealth may go further than visits to its members. Some officials suggest that the Queen should live a part of each year in one or another of the Commonwealth countries. From the constitutional standpoint this is a revolutionary suggestion. And Britain prefers evolution to revolution. But it is an indication of the progressive viewpoint that some supporters of the Crown have adopted toward its political uses in the modern world.
No institution in Britain escapes attack, and so the institution of monarchy is attacked. But such criticism is rarely coherent, popular, or direct. On the whole, there is less criticism than there was a century ago. Republicanism died as a political force in the 1870's. The Chartists in their peak period, roughly between 1838 and 1849, included in their demands the establishment of a republic. When Victoria withdrew into her grief after the death of the Prince Consort, a republican movement of some importance developed. New impetus was given by the establishment of the Third Republic in France in 1871. Charles Bradlaugh and George Odger, men of some importance, spoke eloquently in support of a republic. But the last "Republican Conference" was held in 1873, and Sir Charles Dilke later ascribed his youthful republicanism to "political infancy."